Carnival Corporation, which with all its brands has 100-plus ships, is paying a fine levied by the U.S. Department of Justice and will also have to pay individuals who suffered from past discrimination. The settlement revolves around the company’s failing — allegedly — to provide and reserve accessible cabins for passengers with disabilities.

For the first time, the government will require Carnival to provide a minimum number of accessible cabins and to develop a remediation plan that complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Other lines may have to do the same thing.

Carnival fully co-operated and will be retro-fitting some cabins, and will train staff and managers for assisting persons with disabilities.

…………

Norwegian Cruise Line said earlier this year it would decide by the end of the year whether to follow the other major lines to Asia. A few weeks ago, when a port schedule was released showing the Norwegian Star signed to a docking contract, it was more than a hint. Now we know. Norwegian is in.

For the first time since 2001, the cruise line will return to the Asia/Australian market in the fall-winter of 2016-17. For the first time, ever, Norwegian will be heading for the Persian Gulf and India.

Meanwhile, the Epic was sent to Europe this year to “stay” there full-time. Not. After next summer, the Epic will throw her bow lines down in Port Canaveral in fall 2016, offering three-four-and-seven-day itineraries.

Norwegian Sun is also back in South America and it’s not a one-year plan. She’ll be back next winter sailing a myriad of seven-to-20-day cruises, adding Rio de Janeiro to the ports of Valparaiso and Buenos Aires.

…………

One reality show is leaving, and another is starting.

Holland America is in its final year of the Holland America version of Dancing With The Stars. The line has decided not to renew after this season. Winners on each ship wind up on the Champions Cruise on Nieuw Amsterdam, where they’ll dance their feet off for the Mirror Ball Trophy.

If dancing is not your thing, this one is good news. A version of my favourite reality show is coming to Princess Cruises. The Voice, with rising popularity, will have an at-sea version called The Voice of the Ocean. Sadly, judges Blake Shelton, Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera — the stars of the TV show — will not be there.

It all starts with a karaoke session to see if you can hold a note (can’t everyone?), followed by a series of eliminations until the winner is picked on each ship in a final show before the passengers. Details are important and you will find them at princess.com/voice.

…………

And finally, the worst part of cruising around the world is the flying, squeezed into cramped quarters and sometimes flying all night. By the time we get to embarkation, we feel like we have stuffed inside a sausage casing.

So under the heading “this is not science fiction” Airbus, Boeing’s major competitor, received a trademark from the U.S. patent department for a hypersonic jet that will fly, as an example between Toronto and London in one hour, and Vancouver to Hong Kong in two. I won’t go into details but if you think it’s impossible, the U.S. air force expects to have a hypersonic craft flying in 2023.

At that speed, the airlines could remove some bathrooms and enlarge the passenger area … sorry, just dreaming.

Phil’s Pick of the Week

This one is not far away and offers great value, Vancouver to San Diego via Hawaii on Holland America’s Zaandam …

Gotham traces the rise of the great DC Comics super-villains and vigilantes. Jessica Miglio/Fox

The major broadcast networks have more than two dozen shows debuting this fall, including Katherine Heigl’s stab at a TV comeback, a third NCIS, no fewer than three comic-book-inspired superhero fantasies and yet another prime-time soap from the producer of Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy, this one starring double Oscar nominee Viola Davis in the Kerry Washington/Ellen Pompeo role.

In all that noise, it can be hard to tell the good from the bad, especially with so much to choose from and when the only way to decide is from is a pilot episode. As avid TV watchers know, a lot can happen between a first episode and a second, not all of it good.

Bottom line: As new seasons go, the 2014-’15 season is mediocre, based on the early evidence of the network pilots.

Ben McKenzie, left, as James Gordon and David Mazouz as a young Bruce Wayne in Gotham. Jessica Miglio/Fox

No one series stands out, the way Lost and Desperate Housewives did in 2004. It’s hard to believe, but that was more than 10 years ago now.

The most eagerly awaited fall TV appointments are, once again, returning favourites like The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, The Good Wife, Survivor and The Amazing Race.

Once again, the most addictive, adult dramas are on the premium, pay-TV specialty channels: Homeland, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story and Boardwalk Empire and Sons of Anarchy’s final seasons will all bow between now and mid-October.

Some of the more promising new series — among them M. Night Shyamalan’s made-in-B.C. thriller Wayward Pines; Battle Creek, the small-town police procedural from Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad, and David Shore, creator of House; and the Agents of SHIELD-spinoff Agent Carter — are being held back for midseason.

Some of the fall newcomers look more promising than others. And while no one show jumps out as being particularly groundbreaking, three bear keeping an eye on:

Gotham

Sept. 22, CTV, Fox

Expect the unexpected.

Even though Gotham tells a familiar tale — Batman, yet again — it’s so dark, so serious and so layered it’s easy to forget you’re watching a story you may have seen countless times before.

It’s always hard to tell anything meaningful about a new series based on a single hour but Gotham’s opener, directed with a cool, confident cinematic style by U.K. veteran Danny Cannon, looks, sounds and feels a cut above the rest.

Here are three things you might not have guessed about this latest retelling of the Batman mythology:

The story is told from a young Commissioner Gordon’s point of view, when Gordon was a young, idealistic police detective working his way up the ranks.

The young Gordon is played with a deft combination of understated calm and smoldering intensity by Ben McKenzie, familiar to anyone who watched The OC or, more recently, Southland. McKenzie owns every scene he’s in, even those with all-world scene-stealer Donal Logue.

And, finally, Batman is still a young child here, and a peripheral figure at that. The real star of the show, other than familiar villains Catwoman, The Penguin and The Riddler — all starting out on their lives of crime — is Gordon.

That may sound lame, but, oddly enough, it works. Gotham is the fall’s most promising new drama — by far.

Gracepoint

Oct. 2, Global, Fox

Broadchurch, U.K. screenwriter Chris Chibnall’s slow-burning, achingly beautiful mystery about the disappearance of a young boy in a bucolic seaside town overlooking the English Channel, was one highlights of the 2012-’13 TV season — anywhere. Broadchurch was ITV’s answer to the Danish series The Killing, and it made a similarly immediate, worldwide impact.

Gracepoint, essentially a scene-by-scene, beat-by-beat remake through the first two episodes, has the same tense tone and skillful, nuanced performances, from David Tennant, reprisng his Broadchurch role — but with an American accent this time — and Breaking Bad’s Anna Gunn, filling in the Olivia Colman role of the ambitious small-town detective who lands the case of her career.

Virginia Kull, left, and Michael Peña in Gracepoint. Ed Araquel/Fox

There is quality in nearly every aspect of Gracepoint, from the adult, densely layered material to the heartfelt performances.

Still, a nagging question lingers: Will Gracepoint change course in its third episode, as its makers insist, or will it remain a near carbon copy of Broadchurch, with the same characters and same resolution, but in a different setting with different accents?

The opener shows promise, though.

Marry Me

Oct. 17, Global (Oct. 14 on NBC)

Remember Happy Endings? Few relationship comedies drew such a vocal, devoted following, ultimately in a lost cause.

That’s worth remembering, because Marry Me hails from the same writer-creator — David Caspe — and stars one of Happy Endings’ main players, Casey Wilson.

There are a lot of new sitcoms this fall, but if there’s one that has the potential to break out with its clever, deft mix of sweetness, light and oddball humour, it’s Marry Me.

Ken Marino, left, and Casey Wilson in Marry Me. Greg Gaynes/NBC)

The story picks up six years after Annie (Wilson) and Jake (Ken Marino) bonded over their mutual love of nachos. They’ve been inseparable ever since.

After returning from a romantic two-week island getaway, Jake is finally ready to pop the question — but before he can, Annie rips into him for his failure to commit, and the die is cast. We know they’re meant to be together, but do they realize it themselves?

The result is a sitcom that could just as easily go off the rails as stay on the straight and narrow, but Marry Me is off to a promising, at-times poignant beginning.

DEFINING TRENDS of the 2014-’15 FALL SEASON

More comic-book superheroes: Arrow has spawned The Flash, due in October, and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD will spawn Marvel’s Agent Carter in midseason. Constantine, spun off from DC Comics’ Hellblazer, will appear in October, a week after The Flash. And Gotham, freely adapted from DC Comics’ Batman franchise, officially ushers in the new fall season on Sept. 22.

Grant Gustin as The Flash. Jack Rowand/The CW

Imitation is still the sincerest form of television, and nothing exceeds quite like success. The enduring popularity of crime procedurals like CSI, NCIS and Person of Interest has spawned NCIS: New Orleans and Scorpion, due in September, and the self-explanatory Stalker, in October. Another CSI spinoff, CSI: Cyber, arrives in midseason.

Mixed marriages, crossed signals and loving-but-dysfunctional families dominate the new sitcoms, in shows like The McCarthys, Selfie, Black-ish, A-to-Z, Cristela, Mulaney, Jane the Virgin and Marry Me. If some of the new comedies sound eerily like telenovelas, that’s because some of them are: The Mysteries of Laura was loosely based on the Spanish series Los misterios de Laura, and Jane the Virgin was inspired by the Venezuelan soap Juana la Virgen.

David Tennant reprises his Broadchurch role in Gracepoint. Mathieu Young/Fox

Expect more British actors channelling American accents. After Hugh Laurie opened the door with House and Matthew Rhys stepped into the shoes of The Americans, there’s been a steady stream of U.K. actors applying their voice training to nailing down regional U.S. accents, from Andrew Lincoln in The Walking Dead and Stephen Moyer in True Blood to Michael Sheen in Masters of Sex and Dominic West in the soon-to-debut relationship drama The Affair. Up next: David Tennant revisiting his U.K. Broadchurch character in the filmed-in-B.C. remake Gracepoint, but with a flat Pacific Northwest accent filling in for his natural Scottish pipes.

JIBBER-JABBER!

You want jibber-jabber? Consider this:

No less an expert than McGill University professor of behavioral neuroscience Daniel Levitin noted, in a recent opinion piece for the New York Times titled Hit the reset button on your brain, the world’s 21,000-plus TV stations produce 85,000 hours of original programming every day — and that’s by 2003 figures.

We watch on average five hours of TV a day, according to a study this past spring by the U.S. ratings agency Nielsen.

But wait, there’s more:

We watch more TV as we get older: Nielsen found that, once we pass 65, we watch more than seven hours a day.

If you’re wondering why the world needs another NCIS — the new NCIS: New Orleans makes three — there’s your answer right there.

NEW SERIES PREMIERE DATES

Utopia – Sept. 7, City, Fox

The Mysteries of Laura – Sept. 17, CTV, NBC

Red Band Society – Sept. 17, Fox

Madam Secretary – Sept. 21, Global, CBS

Gotham – Sept. 22, CTV, Fox

Scorpion – Sept. 22, City, CBS

Forever – Sept. 22, CTV, ABC

NCIS: New Orleans – Sept. 23, Global, CBS

Black-ish – Sept. 24, City, ABC

How to Get Away with Murder – Sept. 25, CTV, ABC

Selfie – Sept. 30, ABC

Manhattan Love Story – Sept. 30, ABC

Stalker – Oct. 1, Global, CBS

Gracepoint – Oct. 2, Global, Fox

Bad Judge – Oct. 3, Global, NBC

A-to-Z – Oct. 3, Global NBC

Mulaney – Oct. 5, Fox

The Flash – Oct. 7, CTV, CW

Cristela – Oct. 10, ABC

Jane the Virgin – Oct. 13, CW

Marry Me – Oct. 17, Global (Oct. 14 on NBC)

Constantine – Oct. 24, Global, NBC

The McCarthys – Oct. 30, CTV, CBS

State of Affairs – Nov. 17, Global, NBC

And, In case you were wondering, City and Rogers Sportsnet start their grand new Hockey Night in Canada (Saturdays) and Rogers Hometown Hockey (Sundays) experiment on Oct. 11 and 12 respectively.

THE RETURNEES

The shiny new toy always catches the eye, but human behavior shows that once the lustre has worn off and our curiosity is satisfied, we go back to the tried and true.

The 10 most-watched programs in Canada in mid May — the season finales— reflect popular tastes like nothing else, and those are the programs that will grab the biggest audience when they return.

The Big Bang Theory (CTV) — the field leader, with an average of more than three million viewers a week across Canada — returns on a new day and time, Monday, Sept. 22, with such all-important questions answered as: What happens next between Penny and Leonard, and, did Sheldon get on that train or not?

You may have heard a lot about how the best TV these days is on the premium, pay-TV and specialty channels, and not the broadcast networks.

So, is that true?

In a word, yes. As late-night comedian Seth Meyers prepares to host the 66th Emmy Awards on Aug. 25, just one network program — Downton Abbey — is nominated for outstanding drama series. And even that isn’t from a commercial mainstream network, but rather public broadcaster PBS.

But wait, there’s more: HBO led the field heading into this year’s Emmys with 99 nominations overall, out of a total of more than 500 nominations in 90 categories. HBO’s total is more than double that of network frontrunner CBS, which led the other U.S. broadcast networks with 47 nods.

But wait, there’s yet more: Even Netflix got in on the act, scoring more Emmy nominations than the Fox network: 31 to Fox’s 18. Other questions remain, as the small-screen’s best and brightest prepare for TV’s biggest night.

Can Breaking Bad repeat?

In a word, yes. Even though the last new episode of Breaking Bad aired last September, it’s still eligible for this year’s Emmys. Breaking Bad ended Mad Men and Homeland’s Emmy run as outstanding drama series last year, and may well win again.

There’s more where that came from. Breaking Bad’s eligibility means that actors Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul and Anna Gunn are again in the Emmy mix. Breaking Bad’s nominations for writing include a curiosity this time around: series creator Vince Gilligan, nominated for the finale, Felina, will compete against another Breaking Bad writer for the Emmy, Vancouver’s Moira Walley-Beckett, who was nominated for the episode Ozymandias.

Is True Detective a series or miniseries?

A miniseries, obviously — but not where the Emmys are concerned.

HBO chose to enter True Detective as a series — perhaps hoping to put a dent in Breaking Bad, where it went on to score 12 nominations, including drama series. If any show ends Breaking Bad’s hegemony, it’ll be Detective.

Never mind that True Detective made just eight episodes, or that when it returns next year it will feature an entirely new cast in a new story in a new setting.

Fargo, meanwhile, produced 10 episodes, two more than Detective, but FX has chosen — rightly — to enter it as a miniseries. Fargo will return with a new cast in a new story next season, as well. The setting will remain the same, however: Filming is confirmed for Calgary, beginning in January.

Can Fargo win?

In a word, yes. Fargo would have faced stiffer competition had it been matched head to head against True Detective, but that’s not how the nominations played out.

As it is, Fargo’s competition in the category is American Horror Story: Coven, Bonnie & Clyde, Treme, The White Queen and Luther. The acting categories include TV movies, however, where The Normal Heart’s Mark Ruffalo has to be counted the favourite against Fargo’s Billy Bob Thornton and Martin Freeman.

Is Orange is the New Black a comedy?

In a word, no, but that’s where it’s competing at the Emmys.

If laughter were a factor — say, just one laugh in an hour-long show — then Fargo and Breaking Bad should probably be considered comedies, too. Orange is the New Black, Jenji Kohan’s tale of a young woman sentenced to 15 months in a women’s prison for transporting a suitcase full of drug money to her former girlfriend, is certainly one of the TV year’s talking points.

If you can wrap your head around it being nominated opposite more traditional comedies like The Big Bang Theory, Veep, Louie and Emmy perennial Modern Family, you might even see it winning.

For the record, equally dark comedies Shameless, House of Lies, Californication, Nurse Jackie and Kohan’s own Weeds have been considered comedies in the past.

Will reality TV ever go away?

In a word, no. Outstanding reality program — itself a relatively recent category — has been split in two this time: “structured reality program” and “unstructured reality program.” The more, the merrier.

The difference between structured and unstructured, evidently, is that the first follows a pre-determined format or blueprint. The second is more of a fly-on-the-wall treatment, with cameras.

Yet another reality-TV category is outstanding reality-competition program. This year’s field includes Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, Project Runway, Top Chef, The Voice and Emmy perennial The Amazing Race. Word to the wise: Never bet against the Race.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/hold-5-questions-about-the-emmys/feed0alxstrachanTV Tuesday: Dancing With the Stars names a winner (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-dancing-with-the-stars-names-a-winner-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-dancing-with-the-stars-names-a-winner-with-video#respondTue, 20 May 2014 07:26:31 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=446837One of the biggest talent competitions on TV right now reveals its season winner Tuesday. And then there’s Dancing With the Stars.

Despite the presence of former gold-medal Olympians and an all-too-brief cameo by NHL bad boy Sean Avery, this has not been a stellar season for Dancing.

The final contenders for the sparkly, star-spangled Mirrorball trophy are former Full House star Candace Cameron Bure, Paralympic snowboarder Amy Purdy; Big Time Rush sideman James Maslow, and U.S. Olympic ice dancer Meryl Davis.

Meryl Davis, left, and Maksim Chmerkovskiy

Davis, the other half of the Meryl Davis-Charlie White ice-dance team, had until recently been the season-long front-runner, but that almost ended last week when Dancing host Tom Bergeron announced that White and Davis were both in jeopardy, in the all-important voting results.

It’s important, that is, if you’re among the dwindling number of loyal viewers who’ve stayed glued to the set throughout Dancing’s 18 seasons so far. As it is, it was White, not Davis, who was sent home, robbing Dancing of the spectacle of seeing the Olympic ice dancers face off against each other for the Mirrorball trophy.

Sharna Burgess, left, and Charlie White

All those sequins and bedazzled sparkles blur together after a while, but there’s no taking away from the fact that the real stars of Dancing With the Stars are the professional dancers who suck it up and deal with the stars’ tears, tantrums and emotional meltdowns while trying to make it entertaining for the viewers. Dancing still has a dash of class, thanks in no small part to the pro dancers, including Maksim Chmerkovskiy. It’s Chmerkovskiy for the win.

Dancing With the Stars airs Tuesday on CTV Two/ABC

Sharna Burgess, left, and Charlie White

Also Watch
Christina Grimmie may not win The Voice — though her mentor Adam Levine has said she will. Grimmie’s “Instant Save” last week set a Twitter record for tweets during a broadcast TV series with nearly two million, according to NBC. (CTV, NBC)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-dancing-with-the-stars-names-a-winner-with-video/feed0MERYL DAVIS, MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIYalxstrachanMERYL DAVIS, MAKSIM CHMERKOVSKIYDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsTV Monday: Viral sensation Christina Grimmie poised to win The Voicehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-viral-sensation-christina-grimmie-poised-to-win-the-voice
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-viral-sensation-christina-grimmie-poised-to-win-the-voice#respondMon, 19 May 2014 07:16:47 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=446584The Voice finally had its moment last week, in large part, because of social media. Christina Grimmie, a 20-year-old New Jersey pianist and singer-songwriter better known as zeldaxlove64 on YouTube, was saved by The Voice’s Instant Vote on Twitter, in real time, during the time it took for a commercial break to air.

Grimmie was already a YouTube sensation when she first auditioned for The Voice: Her cover of OneRepublic’s Counting Stars had logged 3.7 million views at that point. Her earlier cover of Alicia Keys and Fall Out Boy with a-cappella artist and fellow viral video sensation Mike Tompkins logged nearly six million views.

Grimmie is one of three singers to make Monday’s final performance. Last week, her coach-mentor Adam Levine pulled a Mark Messier, saying that if Grimmie was saved that night, she would win the entire competition.

The final reveal is Tuesday, but it’s what happens in Monday’s performance show, that will decide the final result.

Christina Grimmie performs on The Voice

Grimmie is not Alicia Keys, or even Carrie Underwood. What she has, though, is a burning, genuine, heartfelt emotion often lacking in music competition TV shows — a passion that shines through in her watch-me-survive-or-watch-me-die performances.

She has matured, too. She no longer wants to do covers, she says: She wants to focus on writing and performing original music.

Grimmie has the potential to be special — and, right now, she’s one of the biggest reasons to watch The Voice.

The Voice airs Monday on CTV/NBC

Christina Grimmie performs on The Voice

Also Watch:
Bones wraps its ninth season with Booth (David Boreanaz) wrongfully implicated in the death of a conspiracy-blog writer. Of course: It’s a conspiracy. Bones will return in the fall for a 10th season. And, yes, that means it will have been on the air for a full decade. Imagine that. (Global, Fox)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-viral-sensation-christina-grimmie-poised-to-win-the-voice/feed0The Voice - Season 6alxstrachanThe Voice - Season 6The Voice - Season 6Harry Connick Jr. defends being tough on American Idol (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/harry-connick-jr-defends-being-tough-on-american-idol-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/harry-connick-jr-defends-being-tough-on-american-idol-with-video#respondWed, 14 May 2014 07:15:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=444680Harry Connick, Jr. wasn’t looking to sell a new album or push his name further into the public spotlight. He doesn’t know if American Idol will produce a star this season, but he won’t lose sleep over it either way. He agreed to become a mentor and then a coach and full-time judge for a simple, almost quaint reason: He’s a fan.

He has been for a long time, ever since that day he was filming an episode of the sitcom Will & Grace, and Debra Messing — an admirer of Idol from Day 1 — asked him if he wanted to join her at that night’s live finale, featuring a pair of then-unknowns named Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson.

“I’ve watched it every year religiously since,” Connick, Jr. said, earlier this year in Los Angeles. “I grew up in that environment. I grew up with teachers watching you and critiquing you — a lot tougher than anything you see on the show, by the way. I love that environment.”

Connick, Jr., a New Orleans native, master of the Great American Songbook and composer-arranger who has sold some 30 millions albums worldwide, has an abiding love of music and, more importantly, a desire to encourage and nurture new talent.

That’s what drew him to Idol in the first place, he says.

Connick, Jr.’s first hands-on experience with Idol behind-the-scenes was as a mentor in Idol’s ninth season, in 2010. Farmer’s Daughter singer and eventual Idol runner-up Crystal Bowersox later said Idol’s mentors were there in a cameo role only: Few bothered to put in time with the singers, except for one: Connick, Jr.

Bowersox later credited Connick, Jr. with making a lasting impression on her as an artist.

Keith Urban, left, Jennifer Lopez and Harry Connick, Jr.

Connick, Jr. recalled that his own teachers, including Ellis Marsalis, Jr., were doubtful at first.

“They would say, ‘You should quit. You don’t have talent for this. You should think of another vocation. You’re not good enough.’ Those were mean things to say.

“It’s OK to say, though. I was that fan, sitting there, watching Idol, going, ‘Why don’t they tell them that they can’t sing?’ I would scream at the television, ‘They can’t sing!’ That’s my style.

“Here’s the deal: You sign up to be judged by us, and we judge you. I don’t care about how you look or what happened in your personal life — that’s not why you’re here right now. It’s interesting to know, but ultimately I’m responding to a performance.”

Harry Connick Jr. mentors a contestant on American Idol

Connick, Jr. is used to swimming against the tide of popular opinion. He’s a fervent believer in the benefits of a musical education, for example, even though he admits there’s nothing more electrifying than being exposed to a pure, raw, untapped talent.

“Somehow in music, it’s OK to not know anything about your craft. I profoundly disagree. I tell every kid who comes in, whether they’re educated or not, ‘You need to work on your craft.’ Passion isn’t the issue. My definition of passion is somebody who learns everything they can about what they love.

Harry Connick Jr. mentors a contestant on American Idol

“We’ve seen some kids on Idol who don’t know what a major scale is. At the end of this process, if they make it that far, I would hope they’d start to say, ‘Let me learn as much as I can.’ It’s going to make them better, more passionate people. It doesn’t take anything away.”

Connick, Jr. refused to be drawn into the debate about which show is hipper, hotter and more wired into the culture of the times: American Idol or The Voice.

“I was on honeymoon with my wife, and I remember seeing several other couples around. I assumed they were on their honeymoon, too. I promise you, I didn’t once look at my wife and say, ‘Man, I wonder how they’re so happy. I wonder how we’re going to stack up against them.’ I married the girl of my dreams, and I’m so happy I don’t even see the other couples.

“I promise you one thing. This is a blast. It’s so much fun. That’s the only thing I’m thinking about.”

American Idol airs Wednesday on CTV Two/Fox

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/harry-connick-jr-defends-being-tough-on-american-idol-with-video/feed0American IdolalxstrachanAmerican Idol/FoxAmerican Idol/FoxAmerican IdolAmerican Idol/FoxTV Chat: Death of the TV talent show?http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-chat-death-of-the-tv-talent-show
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-chat-death-of-the-tv-talent-show#respondMon, 21 Apr 2014 14:43:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=432236As The Voice and American Idol push towards their finales and Dancing with the Stars struggles to find its footing with a modified format and new co-host, the question remains whether there is a future for reality-based singing/dancing/talent shows.

With long roots in TV history, talent shows have had to revise and reshape themselves to keep up with fast-changing tastes and many have faltered or been cancelled. Who’s left standing and singing — and for how much longer? On our regular panel:

Alex Strachan, Postmedia’s national TV columnist, Jonathan Dekel, entertainment editor for canada.com, Eric Volmers, entertainment and arts reporter for the Calgary Herald, Chris Lackner, journalist and writer of Postmedia’s weekly Pop Forecast who is also a media consultant with Holmes PR, and Ruth Myles, pop-culture addict and senior columnist for the Calgary Herald. Be a part of our discussion, Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET.

Not so long ago, industry insiders predicted the craze would soon fade. There are only so many TV talent competitions and fly-on-the-wall camera shows audiences will watch before tiring, they said.

But from Survivor to Naked and Afraid, The Voice to The Amazing Race, reality TV is still going strong.

No one can claim reality TV is more popular today than during the years Survivor and American Idol broke the ratings barrier in 2002, but the reality is that people are still watching it in droves.

Survivor and The Amazing Race regularly place in the Top 10 most-watched programs across Canada in any given week.

REALITY’S APPEAL
When Survivor, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Big Brother shot to the top of the ratings — more than a decade ago — Syracuse University communications professor and culture expert Robert Thompson said the audience was fed up with tired, stale sitcoms of the day.

Survivor

Reality TV engaged the audience because it was immediate, unpredictable and lively, Thompson said.

That’s still true. But today’s audience has splintered.

Viewers are scattered among increasingly specialized cable channels, each serving a specific niche.

The mass audience today is drawn to traditional network TV almost solely by major events — sports, urgent national news and award shows.

The bigger, better-known reality programs qualify as major events, especially as they near their final reveals.

The Voice

Even American Idol, which has tumbled in the ratings, continues to draw a crowd, particularly among younger viewers 18 to 34.

The Voice debuted in 2011, nearly a decade after American Idol.

The Voice’s growing success is a reminder there’s still a wide audience for a TV singing competition that feels fresh and new, even if it has been nearly 10 years since Carrie Underwood won Idol in 2005.

CANADA VS. USA
The Canadian version of Big Brother airs during the crowded, competitive winter-spring TV season.

The U.S. edition airs in summer when audiences are less engaged.

For whatever reason, reality TV speaks to more people in Canada than in the U.S., relative to the size of our two populations.

More than three million viewers watched the Amazing Race Canada finale last September. During its summer-long run, the audience never dipped below 2.7 million, in a population of 35 million.

The U.S. Amazing Race peaked at 13 million U.S. viewers in 2005, in a nation of 317 million.

The Amazing Race

The current all-star U.S. edition of Amazing Race stumbled out of the gate. The most recent episode managed just nine million U.S. viewers, even as that same episode drew 2.5 million viewers across Canada.

Why reality TV appeals to Canadian viewers more than U.S. ones is for social scientists to figure out. But it’s a reality.EMERGING TRENDS
There’s a growing worry that, as the TV landscape grows more crowded and competitive, some reality shows are upping the stakes, driving more conflict and confrontation in their chase for ever more viewers.

The pressure cooker of a reality show like Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen has grown more heated in recent season, as contestants appear to be cast for their volatility and inability to get along as much as for their cooking ability.

Programs like Hell’s Kitchen and Big Brother, particularly popular among younger viewers, have been accused fairly or unfairly of contributing to a general coarsening of society and social discourse.
That’s unlikely to change soon.

“The madness of TV is the madness of human life,” the futurist and social critic Camille Paglia has said. “Television is actually closer to reality than anything in books.”

That may not be entirely true — most book readers might disagree — but it does help explain the audience’s continuing fascination with a genre often dismissed as pandering to the lowest common denominator.

The real business begins now, though, with Tuesday’s premiere of this season’s Voice playoffs. The Top 20 would-be pop stars and country artists perform before their respective coach-mentors Usher, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Shakira. The coaches will trim two singers from their teams, leaving three would-be music stars — 12 in all — to advance to the live shows, which begin two weeks from now.

At one end of the Voice spectrum is 16-year-old Deja Hall, who has a pure, untapped, old-world richness in her voice but is inexperienced before a live audience.

Deja Hall

At the other is 38-year-old father-of-three Josh Kaufman, who performed a fun, uptempo version of Pharrell’s Happy for coach Adam Levine, and who reminded the audience watching at home that The Voice is as much about second chances as it is finding the next great new talent.

The Voice remains compelling, gripping TV.

The Voice airs Monday and Tuesday on CTV Two/NBC

Also Watch:
Arctic Air comes in from the cold one last time, in a third-season finale that is now a series finale: CBC cancelled the program late last month. The cold-weather drama ends with Krista’s (Pascale Hutton) search-and-rescue team trapped during a high-altitude rescue gone wrong, while Tag (Niall Matter) clings to life. It’s a different TV world now, even from when Arctic Air started. At press time, the show’s producers hoped they might be able to post an alternative ending on the show’s website, even if it’s just a few clips. Ain’t technology grand. (Tuesday, CBC)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-playoffs-begin-on-the-voice/feed0The Voice - Season 6alxstrachanDeja Hall TV Monday: Murdoch Mysteries ends season on cliffhangerhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-murdoch-mysteries-ends-season-on-cliffhanger
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-murdoch-mysteries-ends-season-on-cliffhanger#respondMon, 07 Apr 2014 06:11:44 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=421605Det. William Henry Murdoch is not one to leave messy accounts, and the same can be said for Murdoch Mysteries. The long-running period drama about an earnest, wise-before-his-time detective in 1901 Toronto ends its seventh season with a classic mystery and, more to the point for fans who’ve watched from the beginning, a number of meaningful, potentially life-shaping relationship developments involving Murdoch (Yannick Bisson), Chief Insp. Brackenreid (Thomas Craig) and Dr. Julia Ogden (Héléne Joy).

To say more would ruin the surprise, except to say that the finale’s title, The Death of Dr. Ogden, isn’t quite what fans may fear: The Ogden in the title is Julia’s father, not the doctor herself. That’s established in the first few minutes. The elder Ogden passes away, ostensibly of heart failure, but Julia suspects there’s more to it than that. She demands a post mortem, only to meet resistance from her father’s circle of friends.

It’s easy to take Murdoch Mysteries for granted. It seems to have been around forever — nearly 100 episodes in all, spread over seven seasons — but it’s not the show it once was. The finale is smooth and polished without being slick, confident but not complacent. Murdoch Mysteries has matured. It was always predicated on the idea that, as Murdoch tells Julia Ogden midway through the hour, “sometimes, things aren’t as innocent as they appear to be,” but it’s become something more.

Bisson was born to the role, but he’s rarely been as good as he is here. Héléne Joy is quite wonderful, too, and there are moments in the finale that are so subtle and understated they could only be the result of a near-lifetime of working together. Murdoch Mysteries is a gentle pleasure, full of charm and wit. And, yes, there’s a cliffhanger ending. (Monday, CBC)

Also Watch
Chris Martin of Coldplay and Glastonbury fame puts in his final session as adviser to the remaining contestants on The Voice, on what’s becoming an unusually competitive season for TV’s most-watched singing competition. The final knockout phase begins Tuesday. (CTV Two, NBC)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-murdoch-mysteries-ends-season-on-cliffhanger/feed0Murdoch MysteriesalxstrachanMurdoch MysteriesTV Monday: How I Met Your Mother ends with wedding receptionhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-how-i-met-your-mother-ends-with-wedding-reception
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-how-i-met-your-mother-ends-with-wedding-reception#respondMon, 31 Mar 2014 06:49:04 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=418274Goodbyes are never easy, but somehow How I Met Your Mother has managed to charm its way through a final season that seemed unlikely as recently as two years ago.

This season’s episodes revolved around a weekend in the lives of Ted, Marshall, Lily, Barney, Robin, and it ends Monday with an hour-long wedding reception and final reflections from Ted Mosby, the unseen dad in the title, 25 years in the future.

How I Met Your Mother is bingeworthy, it turns out. It began in an era when people watched TV when it aired, or later on DVR. It ends in an era when people are watching TV by downloading series on Netflix.

“Maybe this wasn’t a show that should last nine years,” writer Carter Bays said recently. “But it’s definitely a show that’s nine seasons in a weekend.”

“I think we are spanning two eras in television,” Josh Radnor, who plays Ted, said. “We started in one era where it was this traditional broadcast model, and then we made this transition into where we are now. Turns out we were a Netflix show the whole time.”

The hour-long finale, Last Forever, promises to be long on tearful reflections and tying up loose ends, and short on witty asides and the sarcasm.

It is also the end. There will be no cliffhanger, and no movie reunion.

“We owe it to the show to end it on its own terms,” Bays explained. “And when it ends, that’s the curtain coming down on this world.”

The How I Met Your Mother series finale airs Monday on City.

Ted finally finishes telling his kids the story of how he met their mother, on the special one-hour series finale of How I Met Your Mother

Also Watch
In a Voice first, a single mentor — Coldplay frontman Chris Martin — advises all four teams. With a new album to promote, Ghost Stories, out May 19, Martin agreed to do The Voice because of its positive energy, he explained last week. (CTV Two/NBC)

Murdoch Mysteries is an island of stability in a sea of uncertainty. Anxiety and confusion have fallen over CBC-TV’s primetime lineup in the wake of the NHL’s broadcasting announcement. Costs are being cut, schedules are being remade and (relatively) pricey programs like Arctic Air and Cracked won’t be back. The hockey playoffs are just around the corner and CBC stalwarts like Rick Mercer Report and 22 Minutes are playing out the string on their seasons, airing their final episodes before the NHL playoffs take over. Through it all, Murdoch Mysteries has settled into a comfortable, but not complacent rhythm. Its fans are loyal and true. Murdoch is nearing the end of its seventh season, and yet it remains one of CBC’s most-watched programs.

As Murdoch episodes go, Monday’s hour — Kung Fu Crabtree, a Big Trouble in Little China-esque romp through Toronto Chinatown, circa 1901 — is average only, the kind of middle-of-the-road mystery Murdoch is most comfortable with. A visiting dignitary from China is poisoned at a ceremonial dinner in Toronto’s Chinatown, and the case falls to earnest, well-meaning Const. Crabtree (Jonny Harris).

Crabtree is not Murdoch Mysteries’ strongest, most vibrant character, though, and there are moments in Monday’s hour when the series’ penchant for lightweight humour and light-hearted hijinks comes across as stiff and condescending. At its heart, Murdoch Mysteries is about Murdoch, after all, and Yannick Bisson’s dry, understated performance.

Never mind. The episode may not be one of Murdoch’s finest, but it’s full of small ironies. Ontario Culture and Tourism Minister Michael Chan (L-Markham-Unionville) makes s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance, about 20 minutes into the hour. It’s a reminder that Murdoch has managed to successfully straddle both worlds: the world of its Victorian Toronto setting, and the digital world we live in today. Murdoch Mysteries is comfort food for a True Detective age. (CBC, 9 ET/PT)

Also Watch

The Voice hardly needs the boost but it’s getting one just the same: Coldplay frontman Chris Martin is guest mentor for all four coaches’ teams this week, a Voice first. Yes, Coldplay have a new album to promote — Ghost Stories, out May 19 — but, even so, it’s quite a coup. For The Voice, anyway. (CTV Two, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-murdoch-mysteries-an-island-of-stability-in-a-sea-of-tv-uncertainty/feed0Murdoch_716D9_233alxstrachanMurdoch_716D11_019Murdoch_716D11_296Murdoch_716D11_067Murdoch_713D3.5_144TV Monday: The Voice muffled by needless sob stories (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-muffled-by-needless-sob-stories-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-muffled-by-needless-sob-stories-with-video#respondMon, 10 Mar 2014 06:32:30 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=407021First the complaints. There’s talk online that the contestants’ sob stories on The Voice this season are more prominent than before and threaten to overwhelm the singing. Hardly anyone, it seems, can appear on The Voice and not be dealing with some existential family crisis.

There’s talk, too, that Shakira, the sole female judge, is being overwhelmed by the testosterone of fellow Voice coaches Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Usher. Now the good part — and the reason to give The Voice a look when the blind auditions return Monday.

This week marks the final stage of The Voice’s most exciting phase, the “blind auditions” when the coaches vet aspiring singers based on their voice and their voice alone.

Even as the voices on American Idol have become weaker, the voices on The Voice this season have grown stronger. That makes the sob stories seem even more unnecessary.

Audra McLaughlin on The Voice

Audience manipulation aside, this season could be The Voice’s most competitive yet. The season is just two weeks old but already there’s a wide range of ages and musical styles from the singers shortlisted for the battle rounds, which open on March 17.

Each audition program this season has ended on a high note, literally and figuratively. Last week, 21-year-old Philadelphia singer-songwriter Audra McLaughlin — good name for a folk artist — brought the house down with a rendition of Angel From Montgomery by country-folk artist John Prine. McLaughlin opted to go with Shelton as her Voice coach. No surprise there.

Here is a surprise, though: Most if not all network TV programs are down year-to-year in the ratings. The Voice, on the other hand, has held steady. Based on the evidence so far, it’s easy to see why.

The Voice airs Mondays and Tuesdays, CTV Two/NBC

Also Watch

It’s been a rough start so far for new midseason shows, ratings-wise. That might change with the post-Voice debut of Believe, a better-than-it-sounds family drama from Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón about a 10-year-old orphan with telekinetic powers who forms a bond with an escaped prison fugitive. Believe moves to its regular day and time on Sunday, March 16. (CTV Two, NBC)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-muffled-by-needless-sob-stories-with-video/feed0The Voice - Season 6alxstrachanThe VoiceTV Monday: The Voice earns street cred (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-earns-street-cred
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-earns-street-cred#respondMon, 24 Feb 2014 06:33:35 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=400071Usher is back in the house on The Voice, alongside Shakira. TV’s most engaging singing competition returns with a renewed energy on the heels of the Olympics, with Voice originals Adam Levine and Blake Shelton returning to the fold once again.

The Voice last ended on a high note in December, with Jamaican-born R & B singer Tessanne Chin, 28, edging 16-year-old Jacquie Lee in the final vote. And while The Voice has yet to break a major act, Lee’s coming close marked the second season in a row a young teenager made it to the last dance. The previous season, 17-year-old country artist Danielle Bradbery, coached by Shelton, CMA male vocalist of the year, gave The Voice a legitimacy and youthful street cred that has eluded American Idol in recent seasons. It’s worth noting that, in the December finale, Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, OneRepublic and Ne-Yo all performed live. The Voice is no joke.

PHOTO: NBCBlake Shelton on The Voice

Usher introduced such acts as Rico Love, singer Rayan, the R & B group One Chance and a relative unknown named Justin Bieber through his US Records vanity label, but finding that winning combination on The Voice has proved a tougher challenge. With Levine and Shelton both laying claim to past winners, Usher hopes to add to his portfolio this time around.

“You make investments in these artists, these talents,” Usher told TV’s Extra recently. “There’s something that can happen that’s positive. I’m excited about the potential of what’s going to happen, the new ideas that just kind of come up. I shock myself a lot of times ‘cause I don’t know what I’m doing when I’m in there. I just go with what I feel.”

Not unlike the way a lot of people watch TV.

Also watch

Gerry Dee goes back to school, post-Olympics, in a one-off hidden-camera reality TV special, Gerry Dee: The Substitute, in which he poses as an over-the-top substitute teacher at an actual private school. A new episode of Mr. D follows, in which D. (Dee) learns he has one shot at meeting his hockey hero and getting his priceless Team Canada jersey autographed — but only if he shirks his duties. (CBC, 8 ET/CT/MT/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-earns-street-cred/feed0The Voice - Season 6alxstrachanThe Voice - Season 6TV 2014 Midseason Preview: 10 early shows to watch (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video#respondThu, 05 Dec 2013 16:47:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=362873January is the new September, when it comes to our expectations concerning TV viewing. The weather outside is frightful, but the TV can be delightful. If the fall TV season teaches anything, it’s that we like our returning favourites best of all.

The same is true for midseason..

It used to be that midseason was a time for replacements, bench players hastily pressed into the starting lineup to shore up a losing team. Much has changed, though, since the days when a handful of networks dominated the broadcast landscape. An unintended side effect of the proliferation of cable channels is that TV is increasingly becoming a year-round experience. Ten years from now, even the term “midseason” may seem outdated.

PHOTO: PBSMichelle Dockery as Lady Mary in Downton Abbey

The most-talked about shows from the past year were, almost without exception, pay-TV, premium cable and web-streamed dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The mainstream broadcast networks still reach into every home, but technology is playing an ever-growing role in everyday lives.

Turn, turn, turn — to every TV there is a season

Midseason crackles with exciting returns and new offerings

The DVR, or digital video recorder, has supplanted the remote as the must-have entertainment toy. In a busy world, where everyone is pressed for time, more viewers are choosing to watch what they want, when they want, and not when the networks decide.

Here, then, from a midseason buffet of dozens of new offerings and returning favourites, are 10 picks that, either by past reputation or positive early signs, look DVR-worthy.

1. Downton Abbey (Jan. 5, PBS)

PHOTO: PBSMichelle Dockery, centre, in Downton Abbey

Sadness lingers. When Downton devotees last tuned in, Michelle Dockery’s Lady Mary was left reeling, a young mother suddenly widowed, with a baby to look after. The new season starts six months after Matthew Crawley’s untimely death, with Mary still grieving. Life goes on, though. It’s the Roaring Twenties, and Mary is about to step out into the world again, with all that entails. Period drama has rarely been this compelling, which is why Downton Abbey has touched the popular nerve.

TV’s most cerebral, set-in-present-day western, returns with Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens locking horns once again with Walton Goggins’ unrepentant bad-boy Boyd Crowther, but this time there’s an added complication — for both. A crime family from Florida, the Crowes, have cast their beady eyes over Crowther’s lucrative moonshine-’n-recreational-pharmaceutical business. The late, legendary novelist Elmore Leonard reckoned, shortly before his death, that Justified was one of his finest achievements, thanks in no small part to Olyphant, Goggins and Justified’s Canadian showrunner, Graham Yost. Shoot-’em-ups don’t come much more intelligent or adult than this.

3. Intelligence (Jan. 7, CTV, CBS)

PHOTO: CBSJosh Holloway and Meghan Ory

Intelligence is a high-octane sci-fi conspiracy thriller, in which an intelligence operative is wired to the global information grid via a surgically implanted super-computer chip in his brain. Yes, it sounds derivative, but it’s hard to argue with the pedigree cast. Josh Holloway, Sawyer on Lost, plays the intelligence operative, Gabriel. Marg Helgenberger, late of CSI, plays his supervisor, Lillian Strand, and Victoria, B.C. native Meghan Ory, Ruby and Red Riding Hood from Once Upon a Time, plays his Secret Service protector and potential love interest Riley Neal.

4. Crisis (Jan. 8, City, NBC)

PHOTO: NBCDermot Mulroney as Thomas Gibson

A behind-the-scenes crisis — production was halted in November, reportedly to work out problems with later-in-the-season scripts — doesn’t take away from the intriguing premise, about a busload of children from an elite Washington, D.C. school kidnapped by political extremists, or from the top-level cast. Gillian Anderson, Dermot Mulroney, Rachael Taylor and Canadian Max Martini headline a story conceived by Rand Ravich, writer-director of the feature film The Astronaut’s Wife, starring Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron. The opener was directed by veteran Australian filmmaker Phillip Noyce, who counts Dead Calm, starring a then-unknown Nicole Kidman, among his list of credits. As with all series of this type, a strong pilot doesn’t always mean a strong series. The setup certainly looks promising, though.

5. True Detective (Jan. 12, HBO)

PHOTO: HBOWoody Harrelson, Matthew McConaughey

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson play Louisiana detectives whose career paths collide when they’re assigned a murder case that’s remained unsolved for 17 years. It appears the killer may be on the loose once more, and McConaughey and Harrelson’s sleuths must track the killer down before he, or she, reverts to old habits. True Detective may sound on the face of it, to be ordinary and trite, like any number of other police procedurals you can name. There are a number of differences, though. True Detective is set in the Deep South, in Louisiana bayou country, an unusual location for mysteries of this type. And it’s from HBO, home of Treme and Boardwalk Empire. HBO doesn’t do trite.

6. Sherlock (Jan. 19, PBS)

PHOTO: PBSBenedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson

Sherlock Holmes is very much alive and well, and the game is afoot once more. Benedict Cumberbatch breathes new life into Holmes in The Empty Hearse, the opening act of Sherlock’s third season, putting to rest any suggestion that the world’s most famous detective perished at the end of last season’s cleverly titled finale, The Reichenbach Fall. This post-modern version of Sherlock, conceived by Doctor Who head writer Steven Moffat, is witty, audacious and intelligent. It’s enough to give remakes a good name, which is saying a lot. It’s also, along with the return of Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s re-imagining of Carl Sagan’s classic science series Cosmos, one of the new year’s more eagerly anticipated TV returns.

Yes, it’s yet another reality show purloined from the wellspring of creative imagination that is U.S. network TV. As last summer’s Amazing Race Canada showed, though, reality-TV redos don’t have to be low-end, lowbrow imitations, made on the fly, with a Canadian accent. The original MasterChef is one of TV’s more satisfying reality-competition shows — it’s about cooking, after all — so why not give MasterChef Canada the benefit of the early doubt? The new, home-cooked version will air its third episode (the first elimination episode) after the Super Bowl, which, if nothing else, should give it a jump-start in the ratings. The judges are Michael Bonacini, co-founder of Ontario’s Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants; Alvin Leung, a self-taught Michelin-starred chef and the chef behind the classic-modern Chinese eatery Bo; and Claudio Aprile, owner of Toronto’s Origin chain of restaurants and Orderfire Restaurant Group. No shouting from Gordon Ramsay here.

8. A Season Like No Other (Jan. 23, CBC)

PHOTO: CBCNHL players followed 24/7 in the seven-part CBC docuseries A Season Like No Other

Behind-the-scenes documentary series are all the rage right now in sports TV, whether it’s Being Liverpool, a look at Liverpool FC at the start of Brendan Rogers’ inaugural season at the helm of the world’s most famous soccer club, or HBO’s fine 24/7 documentary look at long-standing NHL rivalries, such as the New York Rangers and Philadelphia Flyers and, most recently, the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. A Season Like No Other, a seven-part series made for CBC and NBC with the cooperation of both the NHL and the NHL Players Association, is much the same, only different. Cameras follow a dozen of the league‘s top players, on and off the ice, during the ongoing season, including the outdoor stadium games and the NHL Heritage Classic. Yes, A Season Like No Other is strictly for hockey fans, but then if you followed the hysteria over the just-signed NHL TV deal, you could be forgiven for thinking that includes just about everyone.

9. Rake (Jan. 23, Global, Fox)

PHOTO: FoxGreg Kinnear in Rake

Having adapted numerous series from the U.K., and U.S. TV is now copying the Aussies. Rake, a character-driven courtroom drama starring Greg Kinnear as ethically challenged criminal defence lawyer Keegan Deane, is adapted from the Australian award-winning drama of the same name. Keegan combines ruthless charm and a keen grasp of the law with wanton disregard for civility and personal morals. In short, he’s a wolf in lawyer’s clothing, trying to do good in a bad world, to save his soul and get a better table at the restaurant. The formulae of hard-to-like anti-hero worked for House, and it might work for Rake. The jury is out; a verdict is expected by February.

10. The Americans (Feb. 5, FX Canada)

PHOTO: FXKeri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings

Homegrown screenwriter Graham Yost, son of the late, great TVO movie host and lifelong cinema buff Elwy Yost, has placed two series on the must-see DVR list (Justified, back in January, is the other). The Americans, featuring Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as Soviet sleeper agents living a seemingly idyllic, all-American life in Washington suburbia during the 1980s’ Reagan era, ended its first season on a chilling note: Their teenage daughter Paige, as American as apple pie and Family Ties reruns, found a gun and her mom’s escape kit tucked away in the family closet, and now expects the worst of her parents. She faces a dilemma as the new season begins: Turn her parents in, or cover for them and in so doing become a potential co-conspirator and de facto sleeper agent herself. Those are not questions any 13-year-old should have to face. The Americans won the Television Critics Association Award for outstanding new series, this past summer, and it’s easy to see why.

***

These are just 10 choices.

There are bound to be more — and more than likely one or two that made the list and don’t belong, despite the hype and initial promise.

Game of Thrones didn’t make the list because it won’t be back until April. With TV’s year-round calendar, March and April are fast becoming a new season in their own right.

Another anticipated return, 24’s filmed-in-London, U.K. sequel, 24: Live Another Day, will take its bow in May.

PHOTO: CBSJosh Holloway, left, and Meghan Ory in Intelligence

Returning favourites of note include HBO’s Girls and Showtime’s House of Lies, returning Jan. 12; American Idol, back for its 13th season — lucky 13? — on Jan. 15, on CTV and Fox; The Voice, which returns with Usher and Shakira filling in once again for CeeLo Green and Christina Aguilera on Feb. 24, on CTV and NBC; Glee, back Feb. 25 on Global and Fox; and AMC’s much talked-about, and obsessed-over The Walking Dead, back on Feb. 9.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-2014-midseason-preview-10-early-shows-to-watch-with-video/feed0DVR No.9 Rake2alxstrachanDownton AbbeyDownton AbbeyJustifiedIntelligenceCrisisTrue DetectiveSherlockMasterChef CanadaA Season Like No OtherRakeThe AmericansIntelligenceTV Monday: What will it take for The Voice to find a star?http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-what-will-it-take-for-the-voice-to-find-a-star
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-what-will-it-take-for-the-voice-to-find-a-star#respondMon, 09 Dec 2013 07:05:23 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=362038Something remarkable might be about to happen on The Voice. For the second year running, a 16-year-old unknown is poised to run the table against older, wiser, more experienced competition.

In last week’s performance program, Colts Neck, N.J., high-schooler Jacquie Lee tore the cover off coach Christina Aguilera’s aptly named The Voice Within, moments after dropping to the stage during a rock-infused rendition of Janis Joplin’s Cry Baby.

PHOTO: NBCJacquie Lee

Lee was the first singer vaulted through to this week’s semifinal performance show. The other singers to advance are in their 20s; fellow front-runner Tessanne Chin, originally from Kingston, Jamaica, is 28.

If Lee wins The Voice — and it now looks entirely possible — she will follow in the footsteps of 17-year-old country artist Danielle Bradbery, who was also 16 when she rode her country pipes and the advice of mentor Blake Shelton to win The Voice this past spring.

PHOTO: NBCJacquie Lee

These are heady days for The Voice. The ascendant singing-competition program has charted upward in the ratings, even as interest in similar shows like The X Factor and American Idol has tailed off.

Still, one important question remains. Why has The Voice yet to establish a bona fide recording artist, the way Idol produced Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood?

Bradbery’s self-titled debut album will bow soon; Lee now seems assured of an album deal of her own.

PHOTO: NBCJacquie Lee

And while neither is guaranteed success, Aguilera, fellow Voice coach Adam Levine and host and co-producer Carson Daly caution against writing off either Bradbery or Lee too soon.

“There are winners on this show every day,” Daly said, earlier this year in Los Angeles. “I’ll put it in perspective: Danielle Bradbery won last year. Danielle Bradbery is 16. If we’re going to break an artist, we’d rather break a career artist. And that’s not going to happen overnight.

“She has eight years to figure it out — her voice, an album, whatever it might be. And in eight years she’ll be the same age Taylor Swift is right now. She’s got time.”

PHOTO: NBCJacquie Lee

Levine, the frontman of Maroon 5 and Voice coach with three singers left in the competition, insists youth will be served. One day.

“We always say we aim for the moon with this show, but people don’t really appreciate what it takes to get to the position where you’re sitting in one of the these chairs,” Levine said. “So many elements have to come together. This show is only one piece of the puzzle. There are millions of people who walked away disappointed after doing one of these shows, and some of them have had huge careers since.”

Aguilera herself, when she was much younger, fell just short of winning Star Search.

PHOTO: NBCChristina Aguilera, left, Jacquie Lee and Carson Daly

“The immediacy of winning and becoming a huge star is a fairy tale and a dream come true, that we would all love to see,” Levine said. “But it’s still a fairy tale. There’s going on tour. There’s staying in crappy hotels. There’s a lot you have to do first.”

Despite coaching the 16-year-old Lee to the end — Monday’s performance program is one of the last of the season before The Voice names a winner — Aguilera says success doesn’t have to be immediate.

• On first hearing, The Sing-Off, an a cappella singing competition that hopes to do for groups what The Voice promises to do for solo artists, sounds pointless. But this time last year, The Sing-Off was a surprise success during the holiday season, so it’s back for a seven-episode run with Nick Lachey hosting once again and Jewel joining returning judges Ben Folds, of Ben Folds Five, and Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman. (NBC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT, 8 CT)

• Composition of a different kind is music to the ears in the semi-autobiographical documentary-and-performance program Six by Sondheim, in which the legendary Broadway composer — and this is one occasion when the overused expression “legend” works — shares the backstory behind six of his greatest hits, as performed in the program by some of Broadway’s brightest lights. Included: Something’s Coming, Open Doors and the Barbra Streisand standard Send in the Clowns. (HBO, 9 ET/MT, 8 PT, 10 CT)

• The late-night talk shows are often all about the guest, despite the big bucks they pay late-night hosts, and Monday’s guest on The Late Show With David Letterman has “PVR-worthy” stamped all over it. Letterman welcomes Stephen Colbert, which, if nothing else, will be interesting which Colbert shows up: The made-up character he plays in his own late-night talk show (sorry to spoil the illusion, if you didn’t know that already), or the real Colbert, a soft-spoken, often thoughtful advocate for social change. Either way, expect laughs and a few surprises. (Omni, local stations, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT, 12:35 MT, 10:35 CT)

A deliberately offbeat cast — Saturday Night Live alum Andy Samberg as a an erratic, hyperactive squaddie with a talent for the job; career dramatist Andre Braugher as his uptight, by-the-book squad commander, etc. — matched with a mockumentary film style and some deft, clever writing has made Brooklyn Nine-Nine one of the season’s early surprises, though.

PHOTO: FoxAndy Samberg, left, with Andre Braugher

Tuesday’s Thanksgiving-themed episode finds the precinct’s resident idealist, Amy Santiago (Melissa Fumero), determined to bring the guys and gals together and boost precinct morale with a cops-only Thanksgiving dinner, only to have it go haywire when the job intervenes and Jake (Samberg) and Holt (Braugher) have to rush into the night to catch a perp.

The job keeps getting in the way.

As with other mockumentary-style sitcoms that are better than their initial premise makes them sound — Community, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, The Office, etc. — Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s comedy is based more on situations than one-off jokes. In a strange way, Nine-Nine’s sobering subject matter — it doesn’t get much more serious than day-to-day policing — makes it ideally suited for black humour, the same way Barney Miller took a one-room police setting and turned it into one of TV’s most memorable, respected, fondly remembered sitcoms.

PHOTO: FoxAndy Samberg, left, with Andre Braugher

Brooklyn Nine-Nine has a long way to go before it’s Barney Miller, of course, or even Parks and Recreation, but it has already defied the odds, and silenced early doubters, by surviving through U.S. Thanksgiving and beyond, likely into a second season next fall.

PHOTO: FoxAndre Braugher, left, with Andy Samberg

“This is not Police Squad!, as big a fan as I am of Police Squad!,” Nine-Nine co-creator Michael Schur told critics this past summer in Los Angeles. “It’s a workplace comedy that happens to be set in a police precinct. They are cops and the crimes they are investigating are real, and we wanted it to seem as if it could be a real police precinct. Because of Police Squad! and Naked Gun, and how formative those shows are to 38-year-old comedy writers, it’s hard not to write those jokes sometimes.

“But we have a cat-o’-nine-tails, and when one of us pitches a joke like that, we just whip the other one.”

PHOTO: FoxThe cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Schur acknowledged the influence of Barney Miller, even though it predated both Police Squad! and the Naked Gun films.

“We came across this survey that asked police officers what they thought was the most realistic depiction of a police officer’s work on TV,” Schur said. “And overwhelmingly they said Barney Miller.

PHOTO: FoxPatton Oswalt, left, and Andy Samberg

“I think the reality of being an officer or a detective is you’re not constantly running down a street chasing a criminal. A lot of it is in the precinct house and the relationships you form there with your co-workers. It’s inspiring to us to be able to do a modern comedy set in a police precinct without having the constant drumbeat of being a detective.” (City, Fox, 8:30 ET/PT, 9:30 MT)

Three to See

• Dancing With the Stars reaches the end of the dream-paved road with a two-hour celebration of celebrity rumba, cha-cha and the tango, featuring the usual cavalcade of guest dance troupes, past celebrity contestants and the unveiling of this season’s winner, complete with Mirror Ball trophy and attendant glitter shower. Amber Riley, step right up! (CTV Two, ABC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• In what’s liable to be one of the more interesting contests of the evening, where numbers are concerned, Dancing With the Stars’ big reveal airs directly opposite this week’s elimination program of The Voice. By the end of the night, The Voice will be down to just six contestants, a far cry from just a few weeks ago, when it seemed there might be more than 60. Harder to explain: Why those singers who remain pale in comparison to many of those who’ve already left. (CTV, NBC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Much-maligned Dads, arguably TV’s least popular new comedy — judging from the reviews, anyway — defies its critics in its own inimitable way, by finding the laughs in elder abuse. Tuesday’s episode, Dad Abuse, focuses on Eli (Seth Green) and Warner’s (Giovanni Ribisi) initial euphoria their dads (Peter Riegert, Martin Mull) being assigned to a foster care facility, only to have regrets later. Think of it as a very special episode for U.S. Thanksgiving. (City, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Last week, in a first-time twist that host Carson Daly hyped as an unprecedented, technological game-changer, Twitter followers watching the live telecast were given five minutes to save one of that week’s bottom three singers, using the hashtag #VoiceSave. The five-minute Twitter window was during a commercial break; host Daly dragged out the results announcement until the very last minute of the show.

PHOTO: NBCJosh Logan, left, with Kat Robichaud

Gimmicky, yes. And the singer sent home, New Hampshire soul rocker Josh Logan, later described the process as “mass confusion” — this, coming from someone used to competing in TV singing competitions, having appeared on Rock Star: Supernova.

Enabling viewers to weigh in on social media, in real time, is just the latest step in the ever-tightening loop between watching TV the old-fashioned way, on a TV set, and on mobile devices. The Voice has embraced Twitter since the program’s debut in 2011, and counts Apple iTunes as one of its major sponsors.

In another twist unique to The Voice, iTunes downloads count toward a contestant’s vote tally. That’s telling, because one of the knocks against TV singing competitions is that the fans who vote for their favourite contestants week in and week out don’t actually buy those contestants’ music afterward. That’s why, Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood aside, the music industry’s megastars still break in the traditional way: long hours on the road, performing in sketchy roadside bars, plying the festival circuit and hoping to get that elusive break.

PHOTO: NBCJosh Logan, left, with Kat Robichaud

The beneficiary of last week’s Twitter save, North Carolina glam rocker Kat Robichaud, has stumbled twice now, and is a long shot at best to win The Voice, even after the Top 12 take the stage in Monday’s performance show.

The Voice has yet to break out a major music star, and that seems unlikely to change this season. As in past seasons, ratings have tailed off now that the show is in the live-performance phase.

PHOTO: NBCThe Voice

And yet The Voice continues to entertain, in a way American Idol and The X Factor haven’t in recent seasons, not even when they’re about to name a winner. The Voice’s critics say the show is more about the coaches than the singers, and it’s hard to argue that point — not when coaches Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton, Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine have albums to sell, concert tours to promote and take the stage to perform alongside their respective proteges.

Twitter is just one more step on the road to popularity. The technology gives viewers a chance to interact with a live broadcast, in real time. Viewers become active in the process, instead of just watching passively at home.

American Idol has established a number of credible singing stars but The Voice is the show that consistently pushes the line where communications technology and consumer habits meet.

Chances are, you won’t remember this season’s winner a year from now. Chances are, though, that if you’re among the nearly two million viewers who watched last week across Canada, you’ll tune in again this week. As entertainment, if not music, The Voice rocks. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• A summer heat wave, you say? Only on Murdoch Mysteries. A stifling heat haze settles over turn-of-the-century Toronto, sending residents scuttling to the beach. When a body washes ashore with what looks like a giant bite taken out of it, though, a heat-weary Det. Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) resists the temptation to write it off as a boating accident. It must be a shark attack. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• The Headless Horseman (guest star unidentified) returns to Sleepy Hollow in a supposedly game-changing episode that promises to reveal the motive behind his oath of vengeance against Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison). The missing head may be a clue but, then again, it may not. (Global, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• The futuristic, sci-fi buddy cop show Almost Human settles into its regular day and time with an episode in which John Kennex (Karl Urban) and his android sidekick Dorian (Michael Ealy) investigate a missing-persons case that involves IRCS, aka Intimate Robot Companions. ‘nuff said. (Global, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-breaks-ground-with-twitter-instant-save/feed1The VoicealxstrachanThe VoiceThe VoiceThe Voice The Voice TV Tuesday: The X Factor goes head-to-head with The Voicehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/the-x-factor-goes-head-to-head-with-the-voice
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/the-x-factor-goes-head-to-head-with-the-voice#respondTue, 29 Oct 2013 06:05:19 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=333999The X Factor is back. Sixteen performers will take the stage, in the first of the season’s live shows. By the end of the week, 12 singers will remain. Will anyone care?

It’s not a pointless question: The X Factor’s return coincides with the end of the World Series. And while there appears to be little connection between the two on the face of it — one is a struggling reality show, the other a big-league sporting event — the annual baseball playoffs are having an increasingly larger say in which TV programs succeed and which fail.

PHOTO: FoxBree Randall performs on The X Factor

Fox, X Factor’s parent network, is committed to three weeks of baseball interruptions each fall, which means hiatuses, delays and pre-emptions to its regularly scheduled programming. That’s workable for established programs such as Bones, Glee, The Simpsons, and Family Guy, but it can be fatal to a new series struggling to find an audience, or even a new series that shows early signs of being a hit.

Girls United

In the past, some new programs started strong in September, only to lose much of their audience in October.

Some shows never recover. New Girl, for example, was a breakout hit when it debuted last September. By the time the baseball break ended, much of New Girl’s early audience disappeared, never to come back. New Girl has struggled ever since. It recovered enough viewers to survive to a second season, but it’s nowhere near the mainstream success story it was when it first debuted. The same may prove true this year for Sleepy Hollow.

Wild Thingz

The X Factor is more vulnerable than most to the effects of an imposed, weeks-long break, because reality shows tend to gain momentum, week by week, as they move along.

When The X Factor returns Tuesday, enough time has passed that even ardent fans may have forgotten who’s who among the remaining singers. The X Factor will also be pitted for the first time against The Voice, head-to-head, in the same time period. The Voice, which has hit one high note after another this season, has steadily been gaining momentum since its September debut. Not only is The Voice locked in on Mondays and Tuesdays but, last week, parent network NBC added three weeks of Thursday shows. The Voice is building to a crescendo; The X Factor is hoping to get back some of its “x” factor after an extended intermission.

Khaya Cohen, left, and Mario Lopez

X Factor still has its fans. Nearly 800,000 viewers tuned into September’s season premiere on CTV Two, a respectable if not exactly chart-busting number; CTV Two reaches fewer homes than the main CTV network. In an irony unique to Canada, CTV also controls the rights to The Voice, which raises the prospect of the network competing with itself with two competing singing competitions.

The X Factor

Baseball may yet throw a curve ball into the mix. The sixth game of the World Series, if necessary, is scheduled to be played Wednesday — the same night CTV Two hoped to show X Factor. Rain delays could muddy the picture further. Simon Cowell was famously annoyed when an X Factor live show was postponed and then rescheduled at the last minute, following a four-hour rain delay in that night’s World Series game.

Victoria Carriger

The show must go on, and it will go on. The only question is, when?

As it stands, The X Factor will air Tuesday. The two-hour show will be repeated Wednesday, with the season’s Top 12 to be revealed in a live show Thursday.

If there’s a Game 6 in the World Series, it will be played Wednesday.

If the World Series is over, it’s a moot point.

If the World Series is still going on, though, and if there were rainouts over the weekend, then all bets are off.

• It’s times like this that CBC decision makers are probably grateful they don’t have to deal with the baseball playoffs — or Simon Cowell. Hockey won’t wreck CBC’s prime time schedule until spring. That leaves Rick Mercer to do what Mercer does best: Entertain the country. In this week’s Rick Mercer Report, the intrepid traveller ventures to Salmon Arm, B.C., where he partakes in hydrofoiling on Shuswap Lake. Next up: The 163rd Annual Fall Fair in Erin, Ont., where Mercer tries his hand at mini-chuckwagon racing and takes in a cattle show. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• The Voice will go on, regardless of baseball pre-emptions, last-minute rescheduling or sudden cancellations to other programs — except in the case of civil emergency, that is. Tuesday’s program is the second night of the knockout rounds; the Top 20 singers will perform live Nov. 3 and 4. (CTV Tow, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• King & Maxwell closes for business with Tuesday’s season — and series — finale. The finale, Pandora’s Box, features a split between Sean King (Jon Tenney) and Michelle Maxwell (Rebecca Romijn), after King refuses to let go of his investigation into a recent assassination. He said, she said. Either way, the show is over. (Showcase, 10 ET/PT)

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]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/the-x-factor-goes-head-to-head-with-the-voice/feed0The X FactoralxstrachanThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorTV Monday: Dancing With Stars still has legs, barelyhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely#respondMon, 28 Oct 2013 06:43:09 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=333959Dancing With the Stars still has legs, barely, as the season reaches its midway point. The program’s buzz, what little remained, has dissipated and Dancing is showing its age. Ratings are down, and while they haven’t reached bottom, Dancing’s decline is a reminder that nothing, not even a hit reality TV show, is lasting.

The Amazing Race, Survivor, American Idol, The Bachelor and other reality originals are all down in the U.S., in some cases sharply. And even though Survivor and Amazing Race continue to ride high in the ratings charts here at home, the writing is on the wall. It may be wise to enjoy what remains of Dancing With the Stars while you can. It will return for another season at least, in all likelihood, but the time when viewers could expect both a fall and a spring edition may well be past.

Derek Hough, left, and partner Amber Riley with host Tom Bergeron.

The celebrities willing to submit themselves to the rigours of Dancing’s training regimen — and make no mistake, it’s a demanding, arduous process, especially for those who aren’t naturally fit — are becoming fewer and further between, which is one reason why Dancing’s casting announcements have lost some of their original lustre. Christina Milian is a definite yes for Dancing With the Stars; Christina Aguilera, not so much.

This season has already seen the end of its most heartwarming human interest story, with the elimination of cancer-battling Valerie Harper, as well as arguably its most compelling rooting interest, one-time science guy Bill Nye.

Presumed train wrecks Nicole (Snooki) Polizzi, Elizabeth Berkley and Jack Osbourne are still hanging in there, beneficiaries perhaps of the Bristol Palin sympathy vote, in which viewers vote not for who they think is best but who they want to see come back.

Dancing With the Stars

Berkley, who deserves credit for having survived what ABC’s promotional material delicately refers to as the “cult hit” Showgirls, tied in the lead for the judges’ vote last week, following a Showgirls-inspired cha cha alongside her professional Dancing partner Val Chmerkovskiy. In a confession of the kind that makes Dancing still seem real after 16 seasons, Berkley cried backstage in rehearsal, recalling the hard times she had trying to land a paying job after that famously awful 1995 film.

Elizabeth Berkley, left, with Val Chmerkovskiy.

The other high score, meanwhile, was earned by Glee alum Amber Riley, a mad-talented singer who seems determined to show her dance side alongside pro partner Derek Hough. Riley may yet prove to be a Dancing contestant to watch from here on.

Glee is a physical grind in its own right; Glee’s leading players are given just days to study, learn, rehearse and perform complicated show routines, but that doesn’t mean Dancing is easy. Riley sported a knee brace during her samba performance, and later admitted she “hit a wall” earlier in the week during rehearsal — literally perhaps, and not just figuratively.

Amber Riley, left, and partner Derek Hough.

Dancing With the Stars still has life in it, but its audience is skewing older with each passing week. It’s still worth watching, if that kind of program appeals to you, but it’s clear that The Voice is the white-hot cultural talking point of the moment. (CTV Two, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Halloween comes early on Murdoch Mysteries. Yannick Bisson pulled double duty as director and star in Monday’s eerie, supernatural-themed outing, in which Det. Murdoch (Bisson) investigates the case of a husband accused of murdering his wife — this after disappearing for a time and then returning as a changed man. Const. Crabtree (Jonny Harris) is convinced the suspect is a ghost of his former self, and not a man at all. If true, this could prove problematic for a man of science like Det. Murdoch. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Movie buffs note: Seduced and Abandoned is a silly, somewhat misleading name for a compelling documentary about Alec Baldwin and cult filmmaker James Toback as they pitch a new project at the Cannes Film Festival. Please don’t let the title dissuade you: This is a must-see for anyone curious about how films get made — or, in this case, not made. Neve Campbell, Jessica Chastain, Ryan Gosling, Diane Kruger and James Caan appear, as themselves. (HBO, 9 ET/MT, 8 PT)

• After a torrid start, The Blacklist has shows signs of an old TV problem in recent weeks: The initial episodes, written by series’ creator Jon Bokenkamp, were terrific, but more recent episodes, written by junior staff writers, have been less so. The Blacklist tries to revert to early form in Monday’s outing, in which Red Reddington (James Spader) and Liz Keen (Megan Boone) go undercover as cryptographers to catch a Chinese spy (guest star Chin Han) in the act, as it were. (Global, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-stars-still-has-legs-barely/feed0Dancing With the StarsalxstrachanDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsTV Thursday: Scandal scandalously good, as soapy drama (with video)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-scandal-scandalously-good-as-soapy-drama
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-thursday-scandal-scandalously-good-as-soapy-drama#respondThu, 24 Oct 2013 06:12:15 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=332427Scandal has been scandalously good of late, in a pulpy, soapy way.

Few prime-time dramas are hotter right now. Improbable as it seems, last week’s episode topped seasoned veterans Grey’s Anatomy and NCIS in the U.S. ratings charts, even though some of Scandal’s most ardent fans admit it’s little more than a soap opera dressed up as a political drama — the 2013 prime-time equivalent of Days of Our Lives crossed with The West Wing, with a dash of The Young and the Restless added for good measure. The ensemble drama about political fixers and image consultants working on the periphery of the White House has vied for added respectability this year, following a surprise Emmy nomination for lead actress Kerry Washington — the kind of respectability ratings alone can’t deliver. The New York Times writer Maureen Dowd noted in a column last week that Scandal, an “outlandishly over-the-top, silly sex-and-murder-fuelled Washington soap opera,” seems credible all of a sudden in the aftermath of what Dowd, a political columnist, described as “incredible, insane, illogical cliffhangers in the actual D.C.”

PHOTO: ABCKerry Washington in Scandal

At its heart Scandal is pure entertainment, no more realistic a portrait of Washington insiders than Grey’s Anatomy is an accurate depiction of big-city hospitals. Scandal’s most outré plot twist — the president’s crisis manager is also the president’s mistress! — was divined by Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, a veteran TV writer and producer who, Dowd noted, “became wealthy by never underestimating the appetite of the American public for devilish, dervish plots.”

PHOTO: ABCKerry Washington stars in Scandal

Scandal doesn’t do as well in Canada, unsurprisingly, in part because viewers here remain more closely wedded to NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, CSI and Criminal Minds — the originals — and in part because Scandal airs on a network, Rogers-owned City, that doesn’t yet have the national coast-to-coast reach of major players CTV, CBC and Global.

Scandal still draws a crowd, though, even opposite time-period rivals Elementary, Played and CBC’s National newscast.

Thursday’s episode, Say Hello to My Little Friend, takes on the recent spate of “sexting” scandals, as Pope & Associates take on the case of a philandering senator with a predilection for showing off his shortcomings via text photos.

PHOTO: ABCThe cast of Scandal

Lisa Kudrow, in a recurring role, appears as a congresswoman hiding a scandal of her own. The firm, which had been struggling for clients, now has more work than it can handle. Scandal has become part of the zeitgeist, inexorably tied in with the ever-tightening loop between real-world events, social media and prime-time entertainment. (City, ABC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

Three to See

• Once Upon a Time in Wonderland is in trouble. It’s not just that its debut numbers were soft; it’s that those numbers dropped further in its second week. That’s a shame because it’s a worthwhile drama that’s well worth a look, and that the whole family can enjoy. This week’s episode flashes back in time to show how Will Scarlet (Michael Socha) became the Knave of Hearts. Parent network ABC has not said yet whether it will move Wonderland in an effort to save it; either way, the cancellation clock is ticking. It’s best to check it out now, before it’s too late. (City, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• The Big Bang Theory finds Sheldon (Jim Parsons) on the precipice of a major scientific breakthrough in an outing called The Romance Resonance, but instead of joy he feels guilt. Some things never turn out the way one expects. (CTV, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Programming alert: Tatiana Maslany’s much anticipated return to Parks and Recreation as Tom’s (Aziz Ansari) girlfriend has been pre-empted by parent network NBC’s last-minute decision to spill Battle Round episodes of The Voice over onto Thursdays, for the next three weeks. Now you know.

The Voice is coming off a dizzying several weeks. The so-called “blind auditions” — in which prospective singers audition with the judges’ backs turned to the stage, and are judged on voice alone — is the most exciting phase of the Voice process, because the singers are complete unknowns. The viewers, but not the judges, learn their backstories ahead of time, but until a singer steps on the stage, it’s impossible to know what will come out. The idea is that singers are judged on vocal ability alone, and not image.

PHOTO: NBCRenard Anthony, Kat Robichaud

The Voice has shifted into a new phase, though, when it returns Monday. These are the so-called “battle rounds,” in which Christina Aguilera, CeeLo Green, Blake Shelton and Adam Levine pair off their respective teams into duets.

The mentor chooses a song, the two singers practice in the studio with the help of a visiting mentor — Shelton has joined forces this season with Cher — and then perform before a live audience in a gussied-up boxing ring, prizefight-style.

At the end, their coach-mentor chooses the one who will stay; the other goes home.

Miguel, left, with coach CeeLo Green.

It’s a little gimmicky. And, at times, painful to watch. The atmosphere has changed. What was a hopeful, optimistic process based on talent and talent alone is now like any other TV reality competition show. The judges’ decisions in the battle rounds are often based on who has the better chance of advancing in the competition once the audience at home decides — image, in other words — and not so much talent and singing ability.

PHOTO: NBCJustin Blake, Ashley DuBose

By the time The Voice gets down to the live shows, it’s like any other TV singing competition. No one likes to see a hopeful singer’s dreams shattered or, if they’re lucky, temporarily postponed.

The guest mentors add a lot, though. And if last week’s shows were any indication, they don’t come much more insightful, supportive and critical, when needed, than Cher.

Cher knows TV. The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and later The Sonny and Cher Show, was a staple for CBS in the ’70s, during CBS’s heyday of M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Carol Burnett Show.

PHOTO: NBCThe Voice

Cher is also one of the longest surviving performers in show business, and no wallflower. When a struggling singer needs a little constructive advice, Cher lets them have it. On The Voice, she’s been attentive, demanding, outspoken and note-precise in her critiques.

She’s unfailingly honest, too — a quality in short supply in reality-TV competitions.

“I’m not a role model, nor have I ever tried to be a role model,” she has said. “The only things about me as a role model is I’ve managed to stay here and be working and survive. For 40 years.”

“Where have you been my whole Voice career?” Shelton asked Cher, during the most recent battle-round show.

“I have been working, OK?” she replied. “I don’t just sit on my ass and punch a little button.”

Alrighty, then. On with the show. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

PHOTO: NBCMiguel, left, with coach CeeLo Green.

Three to See

• Intrepid Det. Murdoch celebrates Halloween, 19th century-style, in a Murdoch Mysteries episode timed to coincide with that hallowed eve. A woman has been murdered and Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) finds the signs point to her husband — which is a bit tricky, because he’s supposed to be dead. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Brennan and Booth finally tie the knot on Bones, in an episode called The Woman in White. Naturally, events threaten to intervene — work keeps getting in the way — and Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Booth’s (David Boreanaz) colleagues try their darndest to keep details of their latest case to themselves. Cyndi Lauper, Ryan O’Neal, Joanna Cassidy and David Hornsby guest-star. (Global, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Raymond (Red) Reddington (James Spader) is on the trail of a mysterious, mercurial messenger known only as The Courier, in The Blacklist. The Courier delivers packages on time, and yet no one, not even Red, knows what he looks like. Perhaps they should leave a tip. (Global, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

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]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-cher-guest-mentors-recharge-the-voice/feed0The Voice - Season 5alxstrachanThe VoiceThe VoiceThe VoiceThe VoiceThe VoiceThe VoiceChristina Aguilera sings The Voice’s praiseshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/christina-aguilera-sings-the-praises-of-the-voice-ratings-are-up-it-won-the-emmy-and-aguilera-is-happy-to-be-back-in-the-fold
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/christina-aguilera-sings-the-praises-of-the-voice-ratings-are-up-it-won-the-emmy-and-aguilera-is-happy-to-be-back-in-the-fold#respondThu, 03 Oct 2013 12:15:15 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=322128Christina Aguilera is floating on air, hitting a high note on this early fall afternoon in Los Angeles. She’s back on The Voice, alongside fellow returnee Cee Lo Green, after taking time out to tour and promote a then-new album, the technopop-driven Lotus.

A vocal virtuoso and pop icon once dubbed the “Voice of her Generation” — she’s just 32 — she has a new single, We Remain, from the soon-to-be-released film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and she knows, to borrow a lyric from We Remain, it hasn’t been for nothing.

The Voice opened its fifth season on Sept. 23rd, the night after scoring an upset win at the Emmys, winning the award for outstanding reality competition program and stopping the seemingly unstoppable win streak by The Amazing Race dead in its tracks.

Ratings have spiked — the Sept. 30th instalment drew nearly two million viewers to CTV on one of the most competitive, crowded nights of the TV week — and in the U.S. The Voice is now the buzz show of the evening.

Its week-to-week numbers have held steady — unheard of in broadcast television — among viewers ages 18 to 49, and it routinely trends on Twitter, where Aguilera’s Twitter feed (@xtina) is pushing north of 9.5 million followers and her Voice hashtag (#TeamXtina) is putting #TheXFactor to shame.

Aguilera is quick to admit, though, that she felt like a neophyte when she originally signed onto The Voice. “I didn’t know what really to expect,” she said, this past summer in Los Angeles. It took producer Mark Burnett to talk her down off the ceiling.

As artists, “we know what it feels like to be up there and in that make-or-break hot seat,” she explained. “It’s interesting to me because what the show really does is it turns that around, and puts us in the hot seat at a certain point.”

Aguilera made a point to watch The Voice on TV while she was touring, and see it from the point-of-view of a viewer. She was surprised by what she saw, and surprised that she was surprised. She was there, after all.

“I was, like, ‘Oh my God, I can see why people like this.’ I was, like, ‘Who’s going to push a button?’ I was, like, ‘Who’s going to use their save to save that person?’ It was cool and fun to see that. Sitting in the chair, you’re kind of in a bubble, because you’re living in the moment, and you don’t get to see what it looks like from the outside.

“It’s nice to see that I’m part of a show that honestly stays true to the talent, and makes sure their stories are heard.”

The on-air version of The Voice viewers see at home creates the impression that the judge-mentors know the contestants’ backstories, because of the short, biographical videos that precede each audition performance. In fact, the judges know nothing about the singers until afterwards, Aguilera said, and then only if they choose the singer to be part of their team.

The important part of the show — learning about the singers’ influences and how to best help them moving forward — happens off-screen.

“This show is basically a platform for them to do whatever they want to do after the show ends,” she said.

Aguilera got her own start as a child singer in The Mickey Mouse Club. She was too young to feel fear or know what was at stake, she says now. She was “the little girl with the big voice.” While growing up in her native Pittsburgh, she sang the U.S. national anthem at the occasional Pittsburgh Penguin hockey game, but life threw her some hard hits.

Her parents divorced when she was still a child. That toughened her, but she always had the big voice to fall back on. During Pittsburgh’s sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks during the 1991-92 Stanley Cup finals, an 11-year-old Aguilera performed The Star-Spangled Banner at both Pens home games.

“I remember the journey of when I first started out, and I appreciate knowing where I’m at now,” Aguilera said quietly. “I had great training on The Mickey Mouse Club, but I didn’t know what was going on or what was happening. I was just a kid having fun, being and living.

“It wasn’t until years later that I learned you have to take in every experience. Knowing that affected me on a personal level even more than it did on a musical level. It was important for me to step away from the camera and remember what my intention is now, at this point in my life, as a mom, as a woman re-entering the business. I’m approaching it now with fresh eyes.

“I’m there to be a coach, and to share my experiences. All of us on the show, we’ve done a lot in our careers. As coaches, we don’t necessarily need to win — it’s more about rooting for our singers to win.”

Aguilera doesn’t regret taking a break from The Voice, but she’s happy to be back.

“I joined the show in 2010, because at the time I needed to dive into something that was outside myself. But then it turned into this train that kept gaining and gaining and gaining more viewers as each season went on. I just needed a moment to step away.

“Thank God for Shakira. She did a beautiful job. Just this sweet, lovely energy, and lovely for the show.”

The Voice is not scripted, despite what many viewers — and Twitter followers — might think.

“Obviously, when we get to the live rounds, we’re being ourselves. Honestly, none of us originally came into this business to be TV stars. We’re musicians, artists. Like, we’re real people, you know?”

The Voice airs Mondays on CTV and NBC at 8 ET/PT, 9 MT, and Tuesdays on CTV Two and NBC, also at 8 ET/PT, 9 MT.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/christina-aguilera-sings-the-praises-of-the-voice-ratings-are-up-it-won-the-emmy-and-aguilera-is-happy-to-be-back-in-the-fold/feed0Christina AguileraalxstrachanThe Voice - Season 5THE VOICE -- Season: 5 -- Pictured: (l-r) CeeLo Green, Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton -- (Photo by: Mark Seliger/NBC)9TV Monday: Detective Murdoch at sea in Murdoch Mysteries season premiere.http://o.canada.com/entertainment/9tv-monday-inspector-murdoch-at-sea-in-murdoch-mysteries-season-premiere
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/9tv-monday-inspector-murdoch-at-sea-in-murdoch-mysteries-season-premiere#commentsSun, 29 Sep 2013 04:01:32 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=318483Intrepid Detective Murdoch is at sea, metaphorically and literally (well, a lake), when Murdoch Mysteries returns for a seventh season Monday. A prominent shipping magnate has received a threat aboard a steamer, the S.S. Keewatin, during is its maiden voyage on Lake Ontario, on Victoria Day no less, and avowed landlubber Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) must shake out his sea legs and calm his queasy stomach to get to the bottom of the mystery. He’s still recovering from his emotional separation from Julia Ogden (Héléne Joy), and he hopes the new mystery will take his mind off recent events, if only temporarily.

Murdoch decides it would be prudent to stay aboard and decide for himself if the threat is genuine — especially after the magnate tells him, a tad too pompously for Murdoch’s liking: “Sir, I’m a successful man; I have more enemies than I do friends,”
Prudence has its virtues, it turns out: Before the steamer leaves portside, Murdoch suddenly spots Julia aboard. Their reunion is touching but awkward: Life is a matter of due process, he tells her.
The story, written by longtime Murdoch Mysteries producer Paul Aitken — Aitken penned Murdoch Mysteries’ first season finale in 2008 — is reminiscent of a famous Agatha Christie Poirot mystery, in which the famously fussy Poirot is trying to relax on a trans-Atlantic sea voyage only to be rudely interrupted by a body — or what sounds like a body — being tossed over the side in the middle of the night.
Murdoch, much like Poirot, is gallant and well-mannered, and when a body — or what sounds like a body — is tossed over the side into Lake Ontario in broad daylight, Murdoch makes his inquiries with the gentlemanly manners and proper with Murdoch Mysteries fans have come to expect from their favourite 19th-century sleuth.

The shipping magnate is beside himself with fret. His grown daughter, engaged to be married soon, has disappeared aboard ship, the possible victim of foul play, and the pressure is on Murdoch to solve the mystery before the Keewatin reaches dry land again. A body is found, a young man this time, dead from a gunshot wound, adding further complications to an already complicated mystery.
The Murdoch Mysteries season opener is directed with a sturdy hand by series veteran Laurie Lynd, and it has the assured — if unchallenging — look and feel of a drama series that knows what it wants to be, and knows its limits. This is Murdoch Mysteries second season on CBC, and it’s a better fit in CBC’s lineup of homegrown dramas than it was on City TV, Murdoch’s home for five years.
Viewers have stayed loyal: If anything, the audience has grown in its new home on CBC. Its weekly stories are engaging but unthreatening. Murdoch Mysteries’ is the antithesis of edgy: It’s period detective drama as comfort food, with just enough homegrown signature touches that it’s unmistakably Canadian. (CBC, 9 p.m. ET/PT; 8 p.m. CT/MT)

Three to See
• With the 2013-’14 fall season officially underway, early predictions are finally being put to the test. The Blacklist has emerged as an early candidate for survival, following a strong premiere last week. Just under two million viewers tuned in across Canada. Numbers almost always tail off in the second week of a new series, but The Blacklist ran up enough of a lead that it might not take that big a hit. Isabella Rossellini guest stars in Monday’s second episode, as “Red” Reddington (James Spader) and Liz (Megan Boone) track down a murderer who masks his deeds behind the headlines of everyday tragedies. (Global, NBC, 10 p, m. ET/PT, 8 p.m. MT/CT)
• The new serial thriller Hostages didn’t fare that badly in its opener, despite debuting directly opposite The Blacklist. Hostages drew 1.2 million viewers. Again, those numbers will likely drop in week two but, still, those are respectable numbers, on any night. In the second episode, the stakes are raised when the hostage takers threaten to kill one of Emily’s (Toni Collette) family members after she refuses to do their bidding. (CTV, CBS, 10 p.m. ET/PT, 8 p.m. CT/MT)
• These are early days yet for the new season of The Voice, but last weekend’s Emmy win — a win that stopped The Amazing Race’s streak dead in its tracks — coupled with the return of original judges Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera, prompted a 17-per-cent spike in ratings over last fall’s debut. The Voice debut drew 1.7 million viewers in Canada, well ahead of the aging Dancing with the Stars in the same time period. The blind auditions continue Monday. (CTV, NBC, 8 p.m. ET/PT, 9 p.m. CT/MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/9tv-monday-inspector-murdoch-at-sea-in-murdoch-mysteries-season-premiere/feed3MM_701-highresalxstrachanMM_701-2-highresMM_YannickBisson13-highresTV Friday: Move over, grown-ups: MasterChef’s kids are taking over the kitchenhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-move-over-grown-ups-masterchefs-kids-are-taking-over-the-kitchen
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-move-over-grown-ups-masterchefs-kids-are-taking-over-the-kitchen#respondFri, 27 Sep 2013 06:49:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=317161MasterChef Junior isn’t about to win any awards, not even in a time when The Voice can win the Emmy, but it’s surprisingly sweet and gentle for a Gordon Ramsay cook-off competition — more comfort food than mean, spicy chili.

Anyone familiar with MasterChef knows the drill by now. Amateur cooks compete to see who can best whet the appetites of Chef Ramsay, premier winemaker and restaurateur Joe Bastianich and culinary master Graham Elliot, proprietor and tastemaker-in-chief at Chicago’s Graham Elliot Bistro.

MasterChef Junior

The twist in MasterChef Junior is that the would-be chefs are kids, ages eight to 13, who were pre-chosen in a carefully vetted audition process that emphasized encouragement and kind words over savage critiquing. Friday’s opener focuses on those early auditions, and anyone expecting the tears and temper tantrums of an X Factor audition are bound to be disappointed.

The children — and they are children — who made the cut seemed grounded and well-adjusted for the most part when they faced a room full of reporters last month in Los Angeles, alongside Ramsay and MasterChef’s producers. Ramsay has a lot of fingers in the MasterChef pie: He’s a co-executive producer and the show’s host, as well as one of the judges.

MasterChef Junior

Ramsay’s input this time isn’t quite as hot-tempered and fast-to-the-boil as one might expect, though. Underage contestants and reality TV make a bad combination even at the best of times, and any reality show that relies on kids to boost ratings is fraught with peril on any number of levels.

Thankfully, based on early evidence, Junior resists most reality-TV clichés by focusing on personal growth and nurturing talent at the expense of confrontations and bicker bashes, where one bad-tempered, type-A overachiever squares off against another, while the others giggle and make merry in the background.

MasterChef Junior

A kinder, gentler version of MasterChef may not appeal to the crowd that watches Big Brother. It’s hard to imagine MasterChef Junior becoming a mainstream sensation the way Survivor and American Idol did in their debut seasons. But there’s enough in Junior to appeal to a family audience that doesn’t need to worry about Ramsay uncorking the “F” word at every opportunity, unless by “F” you mean food.

At last month’s press session in Los Angeles, the seven remaining children were asked in turn what they learned about life, cooking — or anything, for that matter — from the famously intimidating Ramsay.

“When he was talking about our food, he wasn’t just judging it,” said Tommy, one of the child contestants. “He was also giving us tips on how to make it better. It wasn’t just, you know, like, my food wasn’t as good as it could have been. It was more, like, ‘OK, maybe your food wasn’t as good as it could have been, but there are more things you could add to it. There’s different techniques you could use, maybe throw in some sort of, you know, herb.’ It was tips that made our cooking better and improved everything we did with cooking.”

MasterChef Junior

“It taught you not to give up,” Gavin, another Junior contestant, chimed in. “Keep on trying, keep on trying and never accept failure. Well, actually, I’m not sure about that, but … if you don’t give up, it boosts your self-esteem, and you can just go so much further in life.”

Another contestant, Troy, said he enjoyed the “tag-team” challenges most, “where you and a fellow competitor tag team every 10 minutes to switch out and cook …. When I grow up, I want to be either a chef or coroner.”

Coroner is a different show, though. (CTV, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to see:

• Breaking Bad continues to count down the clock on Sunday’s season finale with an all-day and all-night marathon of the Emmy-winning drama’s earlier episodes, beginning with the third season opener No Mas and continuing through the fourth season’s End Times and Face Off — literally 24 hours’ worth Friday and continuing well into Saturday. If you can sit through Breaking Bad for nearly two straight days without taking a break there may be something wrong with you, but at least you’ll stay awake. (AMC, from midnight ET/PT)

• There’s nowhere near as much crime in Hawaii as Hawaii Five-0 would have you think, but that hasn’t stopped it from becoming one of TV’s most-watched weekly crime dramas. Five-0 returns for a fourth season on a new night, with McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) willing to go to any lengths, even breaking the law, to rescue the kidnapped Catherine (Michelle Borth). Ian Henry Cusick, Desmond on Lost, guest stars as a terrorist. Or make that militant, depending on your political leanings. (Global, CBS, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Undercover Boss, winner of back-to-back Emmys for outstanding reality program as of last weekend, returns for a fifth season, with Twin Peaks sports bar and grill co-founder and CEO Randy Dewitt going undercover at his fun palace alongside Hooters’ boss Coby Brooks, who poses as “an inappropriate customer.” They swear this isn’t staged, except for the undercover part, which makes it more cathartic somehow. (CTV Two, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-move-over-grown-ups-masterchefs-kids-are-taking-over-the-kitchen/feed0MasterChef Junioralxstrachan MasterChef JuniorMasterChef JuniorMasterChef JuniorMasterChef JuniorTV Wednesday: The X Factor auditions kick off promising seasonhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-the-x-factor-auditions-kick-off-promising-season
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-the-x-factor-auditions-kick-off-promising-season#respondWed, 11 Sep 2013 06:30:35 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=307277Watching the best early auditions of a show like The X Factor, anything seems possible. The would-be contestants are brimming with optimism. A handful of them seem genuinely talented — real star potential — but of course there’s not much pressure at this stage. The auditions are taped, not live, and are slickly edited for effect. The more talented would-be singers are obvious: Their talent practically jumps off the screen.

The X Factor auditions visit South Carolina

It’s impossible to pick a winner, though, based on the early TV auditions. It’s even difficult to predict who might go deep into the competition. Bad song choices, behind-the-scenes bickering, so-called advice from the show’s mentors and a voting public fixated on country artists at the exclusion of everyone else combine to wreck the show.

In TV talent competition after TV talent competition — it doesn’t matter whether it’s The X Factor, American Idol, The Voice or even America’s Got Talent — the country artist wins and then disappears from public view, while the soul diva, Broadway artist, pop singer, hardscrabble rock performer or even the classical child singer go on to a credible music career and, in a handful of cases, stardom.

The only way to watch the auditions then is to appreciate them for what they are: serendipitous, unpredictable, occasionally surprising and, sometimes, downright astonishing.

The X Factor searches for a star in Denver

A 40-minute highlight reel of auditions from this season’s X Factor was streamed to reviewers over the past week, together with a plea not to spoil any surprises. By now, though, viewers know what to expect from these shows. The talent, what talent there is, is instantly obvious. The evening’s most memorable audition — the most emotional, the most wrenching, the most inspirational or the one that practically shouts, “A star is born!” — is always saved for the end.

The audition shows are edited out of sequence and calculated for effect. After a while, the viewer can tell what’s coming next: It’s time for the goof. It’s time for the tear-jerker. It’s time for the jerk who deserves a comeuppance. And then, just as the commercial break looms, it’s time for the decent audition, so those watching at home don’t give up on the show.

PHOTO: FoxThe X Factor takes on New Orleans

The X Factor’s third season bows Wednesday with an hour-long program; a second audition show airs Thursday, for two hours. More audition shows air on Sept. 18 and 19. It’s a long process.

Several things are clear from the highlight reel, without giving too much away. “Because (this) presentation features some auditioners who move on in the competition, we kindly ask that you do not reveal the outcome of any audition, as we don’t want to spoil the viewing experience,” the covering note reads.

South Carolina is ready for The X Factor

There’s not much to spoil, though. The goofs are clearly just that, goofs. The sensational singers are truly sensational. The panel — chaired this time by Simon Cowell, Demi Lovato and new X Factor inductees Kelly Rowland and Paulina Rubio — has a pleasing, easygoing vibe this time, with little of the cattiness or surliness that characterized past X Factor judging panels. Cowell has been cut down to size — he’s no longer the self-inflated TV superstar he once professed to be, not on this side of the Atlantic, anyway. Lovato, Rowland and Rubio are his equals this time around. Based on early evidence, they have the assurance, self-confidence and music-industry street smarts to contradict him if they so choose.

The X Factor

The highlight reel suggests this could finally be the breakout season for The X Factor. There are at least four performers, each very different from the other, who could conceivably have that elusive X factor. Perhaps it means something that not one country artist made the final 40-minute cut. The X Factor always pitched itself as the most urban, urbane and sophisticated of the TV talent competition music programs.

Then again, the voting viewers haven’t had their say yet. It may well be that, like The Voice, the audition programs will be the highlight. For now, though, this looks like a promising season, perhaps The X Factor’s finest yet. (CTV Two, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

PHOTO: FoxThe X Factor visits Denver as it kicks of Season 3

Three to See

• One TV talent competition begins, another ends. MasterChef picks a winner between front-runner Natasha Crnjac, a 26-year-old homemaker from San Diego, and Luca Manfe, a 31-year-old restaurant manager from New York City. If you’ve never heard those names before — and you could be forgiven if you haven’t — Manfe’s backstory at least has universal appeal: His first stab at MasterChef was a failure, and this is his second try. If at first you don’t succeed … (CTV, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Shark Tank acknowledges the start of the NFL season with a little help from two-time Super Bowl champ and San Francisco 49ers running back Brandon Jacobs, as he helps a Morganville, N.J., woman pitch her protein-infused energy drink to the panel. All that, and a pitch for a drink insulator that would put an end to the “moist handshake,” too. Are you not entertained? (CTV, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• If you’re looking for something more uplifting — literally — then you owe it to yourself to see the four-part PBS Nature series Earthflight: A Nature Special Presentation, a bird’s-eye view of flight from the birds’ perspective. Wednesday’s program focuses on Africa as seen from the air by vultures, storks, egrets and fish eagles, among others. Inspirational programming that, at times, soars. (PBS, 8 ET/PT)

Cowell’s hair, the result of hours of delicate squeezing and coaxing in a salon chair, is unmistakably flat when backlit in profile, as he was on this afternoon, as he faced a room full of reporters on the eve of The X Factor’s third season.

But it’s what’s inside that counts, he’ll tell you. In person, Cowell comes across as a standup guy. “If I’m being honest here,” he says — one of his favourite expressions — these have not exactly been the best of times for the U.S. version of The X Factor.

The X Factor is not the genre-busting pop-cultural sensation he promised it would be just three summers ago, when he proclaimed — in this very room — that The X Factor was going to do for popular mainstream entertainment what American Idol had done 10 years earlier — only bigger, better and badder.

The X Factor

That was then, this is now. Television has changed, and the music industry has changed with it.

This has become an annual ritual at the summer meeting of the Television Critics Association. The latest stop on “Simon’s Got Some ‘Splainin’ To Do” apology tour — in which the once-boastful Lambeth, U.K., native apologizes for what went wrong the previous year and how the new season will bring a breath of fresh air to the stuffy, stale air of TV singing competitions — was just getting started.

It’s time to be level-headed about this, Cowell said. The hype is a thing of the past. Now it’s back to basics.

As a highlight reel of The X Factor’s upcoming season played across enormous plasma screens and loud, booming loudspeakers, Cowell, fellow X Factor judges Kelly Rowland, Paulina Rubio and Demi Lovato and returning host Mario Lopez took their seats at centre stage and faced their inquisition.

The X Factor 3.0 will be better than X Factor 2.0, Cowell promises. For one, it’s just him and three women on the judges panel.

So far, Cowell insists, it’s been fun. The X Factor is halfway through the audition phase, even though the new shows don’t start airing until September.

“It’s exactly what I thought it would be,” Cowell said. “It’s a girls’ world at the moment in the music business. So many girls are doing so well in the charts we thought the panel should reflect that. Be careful what you wish for.”

Demi Lovato, leaned back in her chair and if a pop artist could purr, she was it. Lovato, at the tender age of 20, has Cowell, one of the most intimidating personalities in show business, wrapped around her little finger, and she knows it.

The X Factor

Cowell’s snippy remarks, catty asides and occasionally mean-spirited jibes mean nothing to her. The new X Factor judges — Latin actress-singer Rubio and recording artist Rowland, the face of Bacardi rum, a judge on the U.K. edition of X Factor and a charter member of the late R&B girl group Destiny’s Child — know how to handle Cowell, too. But it’s Lovato they take their cues from.

Chemistry is hard to define, when it comes to reality-TV judging panels. Whatever it is, Cowell and Lovato seemed to have it on The X Factor last season, even if no one else did. Their snappy repartee was one of the few highlights of what Cowell now admits was not a particularly memorable year.

There were elements that just didn’t work last season, Cowell readily admits now. He and Lovato clicked, but the panel didn’t work as a whole.

It’s important to Cowell that The X Factor reassert itself as the talent competition viewers are talking about.

The X Factor

“It’s everything,” he said simply. “I don’t think any of us on this panel accept the idea that you’re going to lose. You have to be competitive. If things aren’t working, you have to make changes. You have to try and make the show better. You listen to the fans, the viewers. You work hard. I work hard. And it makes it fun. I’d love to be No. 1. If you’ve got a good panel and good producers, which we have, the experience is more fun.

“And if you get that one or two special contestants, it can change everything, because that’s what it’s all about.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/its-a-girls-world-simon-cowell-says-of-new-x-factor-judging-panel/feed0Simon Cowell of The X FactoralxstrachanThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe X FactorThe Voice’s original coaches reunite before Season 5 (WITH VIDEO)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/the-voices-original-coaches-reunite-before-season-5
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/the-voices-original-coaches-reunite-before-season-5#respondMon, 29 Jul 2013 03:03:00 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=288115BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The vibe was mellow, the feeling warm and the spirit willing as Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera and Adam Levine hugged it out in a weekend reunion of three of the four original coach-mentors on The Voice.

Television’s most absorbing, unpredictable singing competition doesn’t return with a new season until September, but the three seemingly incompatible singing artists — frontman of the pop-rock band Maroon 5, a Latin-influenced soul diva and a hip-hop rap-and-soul artist — were determined to renew old acquaintances, even if the absence of Blake Shelton, mentor of the past season’s Voice winner, 16-year-old country newcomer Danielle Bradbery, was keenly felt.

Some have dismissed The Voice for not producing a bona fide music star in its four seasons to date, but there are signs Bradbery may be about to change that. This past week, the small-town Texas high-school junior, who reportedly never performed before a big crowd before her mother talked into auditioning for The Voice, posted her highest debut so far on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart.

Bradbery’s radio-promoted single The Heart of Dixie debuted at No. 16 on the Country Songs, according to Nielsen Soundscan, with 78,000 downloads and climbing — not bad for a young, up-and-coming performer who won’t graduate from high school until 2015, and who had never taken a single vocal lesson until Shelton and his country-artist wife Miranda Lambert took Bradbery under their wing.

Danielle Bradbery, left, Zach Swon, Blake Shelton and Colton Swon of The Swon Bros, on The Voice’s Live Finale show.

Shelton, the Country Music Association’s 2012 Entertainer and Male Vocalist of the Year, picked Bradbery out-of-the-blue, judging her on her voice alone, during The Voice’s blind audition phase. The Voice is unique in that singers perform on stage with the judges’ backs turned to them. The show’s judges choose who to mentor based on hearing the voice, and the voice alone.

Shelton’s picks have gone on to win three of The Voice’s four seasons so far.

“I understand I’m coming back to the ‘Blake Shelton Show’ at this point,” Aguilera said wryly.

Levine returns for his fifth season as a coach-mentor this fall. Aguilera and Green will return to The Voice after a single season’s absence, to accommodate performing tours. Their replacements Shakira and Usher will return for The Voice’s sixth season, in 2014.

The Voice’s rotating panel of judges has proven surprisingly stable, even as the judging panels on rival music programs American Idol and The X Factor have been wracked with turmoil.

Aguilera insisted the competition with Shelton is friendly, and that the frequent jabs and barbs are in jest.

The Voice’s personable vibe has elevated it above the unseemly bickering that has become a signature of other TV talent competitions, and viewers have responded accordingly. The Voice has seen its ratings steadily climb, even as the other programs’ numbers have faded.

“I think we all agree that it’s the contestants that win at the end of the day and not us,” Aguilera said.

“Obviously, winning is the end goal when you’re on The Voice,” Levine said. “For me, though, it’s amazing to just work with these people and help them get to wherever they’re going. At whatever point in the competition they go home, they’ll go home with all these amazing experiences, based on things we’ve experienced in our own careers and handed down to them.

Adam Levine

“Winning is great — don’t get me wrong. I hate it that Blake has won three in a row. But winning isn’t always the point. As long as we do our jobs and teach these singers what we know and be honest about it and help them along, we win. We’ve been very lucky in our careers. It’s a fun show to be a part of. I don’t think any of us really cares, deep down, if we ‘win’ or ‘lose.’ I think it’s more about preparing the people on our teams for what’s ahead of them, and have a great experience while doing it.”

Some of The Voice’s most vocal fans are in front of the camera, on the judges’ panel, and not just watching from home, Levine added.

“We love this show. We’re huge fans of this show. All of us. We wouldn’t do it if we weren’t.”

Levine said he’s not losing sleep over the fact that The Voice has yet to break a top-selling star.

“It would be nice if we were to launch a huge star,” Levine said. “A lot of things have to fall into place for that to happen, though. The goal of the show is to do what we can for these amazing singers while they’re on the show, to get somebody out in front so they can win. We all know that the lightning-in-a-bottle you need to capture to be successful in this business is extraordinarily difficult.

“It would be really amazing if that happened. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet doesn’t seem like a shortcoming of the show. It just seems like something that hasn’t happened yet.”

The Voice returns in September, to NBC in the U.S. and CTV in Canada.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/the-voices-original-coaches-reunite-before-season-5/feed0The VoicealxstrachanThe VoiceThe VoiceAdam LevineJohn Lennon being rejected on The Voice is cute but misses the pointhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/john-lennon-being-rejected-on-the-voice-is-cute-but-misses-the-point
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/john-lennon-being-rejected-on-the-voice-is-cute-but-misses-the-point#respondWed, 26 Jun 2013 20:33:10 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=271819A video of what appears to be John Lennon performing “Imagine” to a less than amused Voice panel has been making the viral rounds the last couple of days.

Originally posted on Monday, the clip, which reappropriates Lennon’s performance from April 18, 1975 as a modern day audition for an underwhelmed crop of celebrity television judges, has already amassed over 700,000 views (as of publication).

While the video’s case is made abundantly clear, like most viral cultural arguments, the point at the heart of the matter is a simplistic and ultimately false one.

The Voice, along with its increasingly jejune cousin American Idol, was never, ever, ever about finding the next John Lennon — or Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Lou Reed — but rather about finding the key to commercial success. Or, to be more precise, the key to giving the masses what they want in the most profitable form possible.

The measure of success for these shows is not artistic credibility, but rather sales and ratings. Their goal is to find a way to get the public to pay them to reflect their will and, surprise, turns out the public enjoys pretty people with good voices and could care less about artistic integrity. If anything, it’s a more transparent model of the methods used the music industry ever since the term “teenager” became synonymous with revenue.

Of course, the Lennon video is only the latest gambit in a new trend bucking these televised talent shows.

Earlier this year, Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl inspired a meme when he decided to rant about The Voice and Idol in interviews supporting his directorial debut, Sound City.

Dave Grohl’s much reposted rant against the The Voice.

“Who’s to say what is a good voice and what’s not a good voice?” he told a packed house during a keynote speech at the South by Southwest festival. “The Voice? Imagine Bob Dylan standing there singing ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in front of Christina Aguilera. ‘I think it’s a little nasally and sharp.'”

And indeed, Grohl is right. But, as Dylan himself would probably argue, he would never be caught dead on The Voice because his cultural currency was dependent on the implication of authenticity. Ditto uncommercial artists like Young and Reed who have spent the last four decades years avoiding the harsh commercial spotlight. In fact, if he popped up today, Neil Young would likely follow the career trajectory of road worriers like the Dave Matthews Band who, despite an unconventional frontman, continue to make large crowds of non-Voice watchers happy while lining the pockets of their hemp pants with big tour bucks.

In another interview, Grohl argued that it was not so much The Voice itself as its effect on the next generation of musicians that is the societal scourge. But this too is flawed as the formula which led to The Voice and Idol had been around long before Simon Cowell first appeared in the living rooms of American youth, and the pop charts have been steadfast in their cycle of pop stars, boy bands and guitar rock.

In fact, for all their genius, The Beatles were passed over by nearly every major label before George Martin — their Svengali producer — signed them “for peanuts.” And even then, he was so unimpressed with the music on their demo that he only signed them because of their cheeky charm. Sounds a lot like Idol to me.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/music/john-lennon-being-rejected-on-the-voice-is-cute-but-misses-the-point/feed0Lennon, voicejonathandekelDave Grohl's much reposted rant against the The Voice. TV Tuesday: The Voice picks a winner, but will it the best voice?http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-the-voice-picks-a-winner-but-will-it-the-best-voice
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-the-voice-picks-a-winner-but-will-it-the-best-voice#respondTue, 18 Jun 2013 06:00:58 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=264500It seems only fitting. The Voice closes this strangest of seasons on Tuesday, weeks later than usual, with a final three that don’t do justice to some of the fine voices that have come and gone since late March.

The Voice is still keen to find “the Voice,” as host Carson Daly has reminded viewers time and time again, but the celebratory tone of the finale masks the sneaking realization that The Voice has always been at its best during the early “blind auditions” phase, when the show’s coach-mentors hear prospective singers for the first time, their backs to the stage, judging the singers on voice and voice alone.

Finalists, Colton Swon, left, with Zach Swon of The Swon Brothes, along with Danielle Bradbery, and Michelle Chamuel.

If The Voice were purely about the voice, and only the voice, Wellesley, Mass., indie rock artist Michelle Chamuel would take home the prize in a walk, as she alone has defied the popular convention of what a TV talent competition is about. Chamuel, coached by Usher, lacks the conventional aw-shucks beauty and youthful vibe of 16-year-old Texas singer Danielle Bradbery, a season-long front-runner who — if we’re to believe the biographical profiles — never sang in public until her mother encouraged her to try out for The Voice.

The Voice

Bradbery, coached by country crooner Blake Shelton, is a typical country artist in the American Idol mould; why her mother suggested she audition for The Voice and not Idol says a lot about The Voice’s ascendancy as TV’s most buzzed-about singing competition, even if the show itself has yet to produce an artist on the level of a Carrie Underwood or Kelly Clarkson.

The remaining finalist is a country duo, also coached by Shelton, the Swon Brothers, from Oklahoma. It seems inconceivable that a duo could win a show called The Voice, but their country vibe — pleasant but not particularly distinguished — coupled with voter-viewers’ habit of favouring country over pop, soul and indie rock means it’s not impossible.

The Voice – Season 4

Bradbery is the odds-on favourite, though, and not just because rival coach-mentors Usher and Adam Levine dubbed her rendition of Tim McGraw’s Please Remember Me “amaze-balls.” Levine credited both her technical proficiency and her young age in showering praise on her, and that’s a tough combination to beat.

Danielle Bradbery

Chamuel looks, sounds and performs unlike any singer you will see on American Idol, or The Voice, for that matter. Usher chose a Zedd song, Clarity, as Chamuel’s first-of-two songs in last week’s performance program, a refreshing break from reality TV’s usual song-list of Whitney Houston, Elton John and Kenny Loggins. Chamuel closed the show with a show-stopping rendition of Time After Time that brought Usher to near tears and ended with him telling her, “You’re the winner.”

Michelle Chamuel

Alas, as with so much about The Voice this season, that’s probably wishful thinking. (CTV, NBC, 9 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Opera man was a freak, “but in a good way,” Howard Stern said. There was the mariachi band that suddenly and unexpectedly segued into a dance beat. There were gunshots, courtesy of Wild West sideshow act Pistol Packin’ Paula. There was the sword swallower with a twist — double-edged swords! All that, and an on-air wedding proposal. (Spoiler alert: She said, ‘Yes.’) Clearly, the bar is high for Tuesday’s audition program for America’s Got Talent, after last week’s show. (City, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• The talent — genuine talent, at that— is whittled down to 10 men and 10 women at the top of the hour on So You Think You Can Dance. The chosen dancers will then perform exhibition dances, free from the pressure of judging. (CTV Two, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Raconteur, philosopher-comedian and social commentator Jerry Seinfeld drops by on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and shares an insider’s tips on how to win over the crowd when Fallon takes over The Tonight Show in 2014. (CTV Two, NBC, 12:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-the-voice-picks-a-winner-but-will-it-the-best-voice/feed0The Voice - Season 4alxstrachanThe VoiceThe Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4TV Monday: Don’t Drive Here jostles through world’s worst roadshttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dont-drive-here-jostles-through-worlds-worst-roads
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dont-drive-here-jostles-through-worlds-worst-roads#respondMon, 17 Jun 2013 06:14:15 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=264245Rules? Ain’t no rules here. Even if you’ve never seen even a minute of Canada’s Worst Driver in the near-decade the popular reality show has been on the air, you’ll appreciate the hairpin turns and curves of host Andrew Younghusband’s followup show, Don’t Drive Here, a kind of An Idiot Abroad for people who travel to India, say, and decide to tour the country by road.

Don’t Drive Here is a deliberately hair-raising tour of some of the world’s most dangerous cities to drive in. And you won’t have to be cut off in traffic on your morning commute to feel Younghusband’s pain when he says, moments into Monday’s opener, “We’re in (New Delhi), a city where five people die every single day because of traffic accidents.”

The die is cast. New Delhi is reportedly the city with the world’s highest rate of traffic accidents — I would’ve guessed Johannesburg, but that just shows what little I know — where cars of all stripes and sizes vie for space with scooters, tuk-tuks, rickshaws, fuel tankers and, just to keep things interesting, cows, chickens, camels and jaywalkers determined to risk life and limb to get to wherever it is they need to get to. New Delhi has the same number of cars as Los Angeles, Younghusband notes, but eight times the number of fatalities.

Younghusband takes the easy out — he flags down a taxi — but soon wishes he hadn’t. Forget road rules, or any kind of rules for that matter. There are no rules here.

It’s obvious Younghusband is not going to want to do this again.

“Have you ever seen someone get killed on the road?” he asks Sukh Jeet Singh, one of New Delhi’s 140,000 cab drivers.

The host of a show called Canada’s Worst Driver would be remiss if he didn’t get behind the wheel at one point, and he does. As a TV host, Younghusband is hyper, annoying, loud and admits to having a sizable ego, so there’s something endearing, cathartic even, when his driving skills prove inadequate to the job. Singh hectors him relentlessly from the passenger seat — “I don’t think you are a driver!” — and 10 minutes into Don’t Drive Here’s opener, it’s obvious Younghusband is not going to want to do this again.

He does, though. Future episodes find Younghusband navigating the traffic of Lima, Peru; Mexico City; Manila, Philippines; Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia; and, in next week’s outing, Bangkok, the “Venice of the East,” where Younghusband gets an education in road rules from a Hollywood stunt man.

New Delhi is a good introduction, though. For one, people drive on the opposite side of the road there, like the English. The steering wheel is on the opposite side of the car and, for some strange, unexplained reason, left turns are easier than right.

Not that anyone bothers to signal, one way or the other.

“I kind of knew that today would be a little bit stressful,” Younghusband says, chastened. “But I honestly wasn’t prepared for this level of intensity.”

Here’s the good part. That admission comes just 10 minutes into an hour-long program. There’s a lot more stress to come, and you can watch it from the comfort and relaxation of your couch.

Don’t watch while driving, though. Please. (Discovery, 10 ET/PT)

Three to See

• The world is our oyster, in more ways than one. World’s Weirdest Restaurants follows raconteur and cookbook writer Bob Blumer, host of Food Network’s The Surreal Gourmet and Glutton for Punishment, around the world in search of unique dining experiences. The new season opens with Blumer in Bangkok, where one restaurant serves fiery chicken served on the spiked helmets of unicycle-riding servers. Anything for a tip. (Food, 9 ET/6 PT)

• The Voice is down to its final performance show of the season and — surprise! — The Swon Brothers are still there. As coach Blake Shelton pointed out last week, and he wasn’t trying to be funny, it’s getting to the point where a duo could actually win. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Linda Cardellini, fresh off her tour-de-force turn in this season’s Mad Men, appears on The Daily Show with summer fill-in John Oliver, subbing for Jon Stewart, who’s directing a film. Mad Men watchers will likely want to tune in, though, if only to get her take on a Mad Men season that has proven to be both unpredictable and, well, maddening. (CTV, 12:05 ET/PT; Comedy, 11 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dont-drive-here-jostles-through-worlds-worst-roads/feed0Andrew Younghusband in Don't Drive HerealxstrachanTV Tuesday: So You Think You Can Dance raises curtain on Las Vegas callbacks.http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-tuesday-so-you-think-you-can-dance-raises-curtain-on-las-vegas-callbacks
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-tuesday-so-you-think-you-can-dance-raises-curtain-on-las-vegas-callbacks#respondTue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:14 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=260443Even by the flexible standards of TV talent competition programs, last week’s So You Think You Can Dance had a hard-luck story for the ages. At the end of the night, though, that hard-luck story proved to be nothing that a little on-stage artistry, hard work and perseverance couldn’t solve, if only for one afternoon.

The venue was Memphis, Tenn.; the occasion was the final night of Dance’s city auditions. Tucker Knox, a dance prodigy hoping for a career in classical ballet, had applied and been accepted to New York’s Julliard arts school in a previous life. As luck would have it, Knox suffered a serious car accident while driving home. His spine was broken, his sternum cracked. His father struggled for composure on-camera, when recalling the details of that fateful accident.

When Knox took the Dance stage, though, to audition before judges Nigel Lthgoe and Mary Murphy, all that fell away, lost in the past. Knox displayed what the judges described as near-perfect classical technique, and just like that he was vaulted through to the next round.

That next round begins Tuesday, with the start of this season’s callbacks in Las Vegas. So You Think You Can Dance is younger, more athletic and more emotionally compelling than the more established, arguably more refined Dancing with the Stars.

It’s also the more engaging TV program. Watching just a few minutes of Dance is a reminder of just how hard it can be to make technical artistry and athleticism seem easy. If it looked difficult, it would fail as dance. None of the dancers in Dance earns a living from professional ballet or Broadway theatre. So You Think You Can Dance is part life audition, part career opportunity. Unlike so many other so-called reality shows, Dance provides a genuine opportunity for unknowns.

That’s one reason why, even though it’s not the highest rated program of its kind, its one of the most respected, as a Television Critics Association award for outstanding reality-competition program last summer showed.

Dance host Cat Deeley, now in her 10th season, admits there are times when she worries that a new season of Dance can’t live up to what’s come before. Those worries were dispelled early this season, she said in a recent conference call with reporters.

“To be honest you always go into a season with a little trepidation, because you’re always thinking to yourself, are we going to find people with the same incredible talent as last year,” Deeley said. “Then you start the season and you realize, actually it’s not about finding another tWitch or another Dominic or another Allison or another Kathryn or Travis, whoever it is. It’s about finding someone unique, a unique individual with their own creativity, passion and interpretation of music.

“The big thing for me, this season, is that we have a lot of newbies. We have a lot of people trying out for the very, very first time, which is great. It means that, within the dance community, we’re still a relevant show. We’re still a relevant part of their career process, which I think is brilliant.

“The thing I don’t think is so brilliant is when I turn around to this little 16-year-old and I go, ‘So why do you want to be on this show?’ ‘Well, I’ve been watching the show since I’ve been nine and I’ve just been waiting until—‘ I’m, like, ‘Get out. Get out of here. Don’t knock on my door again.’ I feel like a dinosaur.

“It’s nice, though, to see these newbies come through, again and again. You know?”

We know. (CTV Two, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• You won’t see too many classically trained ballet dancers on America’s Got Talent. You may, however, see — if last week’s premiere was any indication, a snake handler, a child singer with the voice of an old-soul blues artist, more puppet handlers and ventriloquist acts than a person should be required to see in a lifetime, and the usual assortment of rappers, street magicians, black-light dance crews and a new twist on an old art form called “body magic” acts. Are you not entertained? (City, NBC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Shipping Wars has nothing do with shipping lanes, ocean piracy or naval warfare. It’s a TV reality-competition series in which truck drivers compete to see who can transport the most amount of peculiar cargo across the continental U.S. in the least amount of time. Yes, this is what the so-called Arts & Entertainment channel has come to. (A&E, 10 ET/7 PT)

• The Swon Brothers live to sing another day on The Voice. Don’t believe it? Just you wait! The final performance show is June 17, live on tape; the season winner is announced the following night, on June 18. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-tuesday-so-you-think-you-can-dance-raises-curtain-on-las-vegas-callbacks/feed0sytycd_06-cat_0487_pw2alxstrachanTNSYTYCD_Memphis-Day1_0424SYTYCD_Austin_4307SYTYCD_Austin_4349TV Monday: Charlie — that’s Goodson, not Sheen — gets a new therapist in Anger Management.http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-charlie-thats-goodson-not-sheen-gets-a-new-therapist-in-anger-management
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-charlie-thats-goodson-not-sheen-gets-a-new-therapist-in-anger-management#respondMon, 10 Jun 2013 10:00:48 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=260268The first season of the Charlie Sheen sitcom Anger Management, now in its second season on the U.S. cable channel FX, recently aired on CTV.
Summer is a time of experimentation for the major broadcast networks, though. Fox, owned by FX’s parent company, is trying out second-season episodes of Anger Management on the main network, in part to see if more viewers are drawn to Anger than tuned in to see some of the network’s earlier, now-cancelled comedy efforts like Ben and Kate and The Cleveland Show.
FX is one of the fastest-growing, most talked-about destinations on cable TV, but the major broadcast networks still reach into more homes.
That’s where the big profits lie, and if Fox can do with Anger Management over the summer what CTV did with Anger over the winter, Sheen could once again see himself back on prime time in every home that has a working TV set.
In one recent episode, Charlie’s anger issues having spilled over — Charlie Goodson, that is (the sitcom character), not Sheen — his friends convinced him to try a new mental-health professional.
Stressed out from overwork and embarrassed that his friends think he still needs help, Charlie visited his former teacher, Dr. Murphy, played by sitcom vet Marion Ross. Fans will remember Ross as Mrs. Cunningham from Happy Days, an iconic ’70s sitcom that, among other things, gave us pop-culture the concept “jump the shark.”
Sheen’s off-screen adventures jumped the shark for many viewers a long time ago, but the fact remains that Anger Management has been promised 100 episodes. Monday’s episode passes into the 30s, so there are many more to come.
FX is hoping that exposure on the Fox network will boost flagging ratings for the cable channel, while Fox is hoping that Anger will reel in summer viewers tired of low-end singing competitions and hidden-camera shows masquerading as social documentaries.
The gamble may yet pay off. When Anger Management first aired, it gained a measure of popular appeal with its warm vibe and good-natured humour. It’s not as laugh-out-loud funny, the way The Big Bang Theory can be, but it’s not as sleazy or off-putting as Two and a Half Men is, either.
The inside joke in the episode is that, much like Happy Days’ “Mrs. C,” as Fonzie and the others called her, Dr. Murphy is a mother hen who can’t help but smother Charlie with an inordinate amount of attention and motherly affection. This grates on Charlie to no end — he’s an adult, after all, not a teenager — and it isn’t long before there’s a falling out.
Episodes to come in the new season include such self-explanatory outings as Charlie and the Secret Gigilo, Charlie and the Airport Sext, Charlie and His New Friend with Benefits, Charlie and Kate Start a Sex Study and Charlie and Kate Have Sex for Science. You don’t need to be a scientist to detect a trend.
It’s summer, though. Standards are lower. Compared to the alternatives, Anger Management doesn’t look half bad. (Fox, 9:30 ET/PT, 7:30 MT)

Three to See
• The Swon Brothers are still in contention on The Voice, proving perhaps that the influence of the recently closed-down website VoteForTheWorst.com lingers long after the fact. The Voice finale is slated for June 18, by the way, a little more than a week from now. Vote early, and vote often. (CTV, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT; NBC, 9 ET/PT)
• The Voice isn’t the only singing competition on TV at the moment. The Winner Is … is a new TV talent contest in which would-be singers compete for $1 million. The twist — there’s always a twist — is that contestants can gamble on a chance to win the entire pot or else settle for a lesser amount if they feel the judges won’t vote their way. Nick Lachey is the host. Consider yourself warned. (Global, NBC, 10 ET/PT)
• Every so often, a late-night talk show appearance may prove to be PVR-worthy. Unpredictable firebrand stand-up comedian and tabloid headline grabber Russell Brand joins David Letterman, himself no stranger to late-night controversy, on Late Show. Also scheduled: the indie pop band Haim. (Omni, local stations, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-charlie-thats-goodson-not-sheen-gets-a-new-therapist-in-anger-management/feed0AM_1031_0204alxstrachanNights of a thousand, make that a dozen comedy stars: An early look at the Canadian networks’ fall TV season.http://o.canada.com/entertainment/nights-of-a-thousand-make-that-a-dozen-comedy-stars-an-early-look-at-the-canadian-networks-fall-tv-season
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/nights-of-a-thousand-make-that-a-dozen-comedy-stars-an-early-look-at-the-canadian-networks-fall-tv-season#respondThu, 06 Jun 2013 15:08:06 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=260146They are “the hottest new fall dramas guaranteed to makes hearts race,” and “the biggest comedies of the season.” They are part of a Global TV fall TV lineup that, judging from the superlatives tossed around at Global TV’s presentation to advertisers this past week in Toronto, will build on “the huge success of last year’s breakout series Chicago Fire and Elementary.”

Never mind that neither Chicago Fire nor Elementary can be considered breakout hits, in the way ER, Friends,Lost,Desperate Housewives and CSI were breakout hits, in the years they debuted.

There was more where that came from.

Global TV and parent company Shaw Media will expand its “impressive collection of dramas” with “the biggest, most-buzzed-about new series.” Shaw Media’s stable of specialty channels will boast “an outstanding slate of bold new series and returning ratings hits,” led by the return of Big Brother Canada and its “record-breaking season” as “the number one specialty reality series of the year,” a show that, no matter how unwatchable it was, singlehandedly made Slice TV “one of Canada’s hottest entertainment destinations.”

“Shaw Media is celebrating a record year across multiple brands,” Barbara Williams, Shaw Media’s senior vice president for content, said in a prepared statement.

Not to be outdone, City TV and its parent company Rogers Media promised the “year’s most exciting new series,” which will join “a winning lineup of returning hits.”

With all these winners, it’s hard to imagine there can possibly be any losers once the new season is up-and-running in the third week of September. Last season’s can’t-miss-winners Made in Jersey, Guys with Kids, Animal Practice, Vegas, Partners and too many others to name here are already a fading memory. It’s as if they never existed — which, for many viewers, they didn’t.

No matter.

The Canadian network fall presentations are a week-long love-in, an annual ritual in Toronto in which optimism rules and there are no losers. Advertisers, talent managers, programming executives and media invitees alike swoon over the awesome new shows few if any of them have seen.

And where they have seen them, they’ve seen just the first episode. As anyone who watches TV knows, it’s the second, third and fourth episodes that are the true test of whether a new program can beat the odds at survival.

This is the way the system works, though.

And even though the really buzzed-about series, the most talked-about, argued-over and obsessively dissected dramas on the small screen today, are found almost exclusively on premium cable channels like AMC, HBO, Super Channel, The Movie Network, Movie Central and FX — was there a more intelligent, adult new drama this past season than FX’s The Americans? — the mainstream broadcast networks are still the big tent, the place where the crowds gather.

In recent years that tent has grown smaller, but it’s still the big tent. The entertainment is less flashy, perhaps, less expensive to make and easier to walk away from, but the ratings in any given week in Canada are still dominated by network fare like The Big Bang Theory, NCIS,The Voice and the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Reality-TV shows and situation comedies are easier to make and less costly than dramas. In many cases, all a new sitcom needs to draw curiosity seekers to that first night is a star name. And many of the new fall comedies have just that.

Global’s Michael J. Fox Show marks Fox’s first regular, starring role in a weekly TV series since he made a graceful exit from Spin City in 2000, after being diagnosed with degenerative Parkinson’s disease. In his new, eponymous series, Fox plays a (fictional) TV personality and father of young children who wills himself back to work after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s.

Global’s The Millers stars familiar sitcom face Will Arnett as a recent divorcee determined to enjoy the single life.

Sean Saves the World stars Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes as a recently divorced father juggling a demanding job with a difficult teenage daughter.

We Are Men, also on Global, stars Tony Shalhoub as an unapologetic single man who dispenses ill-considered life advice to a recently single neighbor.

The Crazy Ones, on City TV, stars comedy veteran Robin Williams as an ad salesman and father to a headstrong, willful grown daughter, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar.

In a risk-averse business where more than half the start-ups are destined to fail, fewer mainstream networks are willing to take the financial gamble on finding the new Lost — at the time, the most expensive pilot episode ever made — when the more likely result is the new Zero Hour or 666 Park Avenue.

The new dramas are a mix of the tried-and-true — a new adaptation of Dracula, starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers of The Tudors fame and infamy; and the Avengers-inspired superhero series, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., based on the popular comics.

For all their brave talk, the Canadian networks are in a bind when it comes to scheduling. Many of their decisions were made for them when the U.S. networks unveiled their own fall schedules last month. Global, CTV and City buy U.S. programs from the studios that make those programs, not the networks that show them, but the Canadian networks are reluctant to show those programs on a different night and time for fear of splitting the audience and risk losing potential ad revenue. That leaves CBC as the sole purely autonomous Canadian broadcaster, but dwindling resources and a singular lack of creative imagination leave CBC-TV behind in the shadow of such foreign audience grabbers as NCIS: Los Angeles and Hawaii Five-0.

In some cases, a Canadian network will just bite the bullet and risk splitting the audience, by airing a new import the day before its U.S. broadcast, or a week later. Global, for example, will air new NBC comedies The Michael J. Fox Show and Sean Saves the World on Wednesdays, the night before they air in the U.S. That’s the exception that proves the rule, though. Showing U.S. programs on a different night than their U.S. network broadcast backfired on Global this past season, when The Office’s farewell season, including the series finale, aired nearly a full week after its U.S. broadcast.

The picture facing homegrown Canadian programs is even more cloudy. City has rolled the dice on several new homegrown comedies, including the twice-delayed Package Deal, a new reality series called Meet the Family, the self-explanatory Storage Wars Canada and the return of first-year sitcom Seed. Canadian drama is conspicuous by its absence; City’s one homegrown drama, Murdoch Mysteries, has found a new home on CBC, where it’s thriving.

CTV is positioning its new homegrown police drama, Played, on Thursdays, immediately following ratings perennial Grey’s Anatomy, hoping to repeat the success of Flashpoint and Motive, which previously aired in that time period. If Played sounds a little too ambitious for you, there’s always Masterchef Canada, which joins The Amazing Race Canada, The Bachelor Canada and Big Brother Canada in the pantheon of new creative ideas.

Global for its part has commissioned a new medical drama, Remedy, for midseason, along with a new comedy, Working the Engels.

The pattern for Shaw, though, is to assign homegrown dramas, even modestly successful ones like Defiance, Lost Girl and Haven, to its Showcase specialty channel, and not the main Global network, which remains home to Top 20-rated imports like Survivor, The Simpsons and Glee. Rookie Blue is on the main network, but it’s being burned off over the summer so it can air simultaneously with ABC’s broadcasts.

The only certainty in an uncertain business is that the big fall TV decisions have been made. All that remains now are the small details — the actual writing, casting and physical making of those shows.

The Emmys are slated for Sept. 22.

The official TV season, inasmuch as anything about TV is official these days, starts Sept. 23. Stay tuned.

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/nights-of-a-thousand-make-that-a-dozen-comedy-stars-an-early-look-at-the-canadian-networks-fall-tv-season/feed0Sean Saves the World - Season PilotalxstrachanThe Michael J. Fox Show - Season PilotPilotSean Saves the World - Season PilotPilotDracula - Season 1CHLOE BENNET, ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE, IAIN DE CAESTECKER, CLARK GREGG, MING-NA WEN, BRETT DALTONTV Friday: Eclectic guests a Real Time With Bill Maher signaturehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-eclectic-guests-a-real-time-with-bill-maher-signature
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-eclectic-guests-a-real-time-with-bill-maher-signature#respondFri, 07 Jun 2013 06:04:49 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=259071“Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked,” The New Yorker writer, playwright, foreign policy expert and author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America once said.

George Packer’s Unwinding, published just two weeks ago, has already caused a stir for its portrait of an America beset by crisis, a country of increasingly rich winners and increasingly poor losers, its political system on the verge of ruin.

Ana Navarro, meanwhile, is a staunch Republican and conservative CNN pundit, a former special adviser to the government of Nicaragua and naturalized U.S. citizen who served as co-chair of both John McCain and Jon Hunstman’s Hispanic advisory councils during their respective GOP presidential campaigns.

Tom Shadyac, on the other hand, is a standup comedian, avowed Jim Carrey fan and the writer-director of such classic lowbrow comedies as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty and The Nutty Professor.

Dana Gould, for his part, is a former Simpsons writer and standup comedian whose comedy specials have aired on HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central.

Ordinarily Shadyac, creator of Carrey’s wacky pet-detective movie character, and Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq among other weighty tomes, wouldn’t be on the same conversational plane.

But that’s the nature of Real Time with Bill Maher, TV’s most unfairly overlooked, unpredictable and often downright entertaining late-night talk show.

Packer, Shadyac, Navarro, Gould and National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson are Maher’s guests on Friday’s Real Time, and the conversation is likely to be more bracing than what you can expect on Leno or Letterman.

Julian Assange appears in a satellite interview on Real Time With Bill Maher.

Real Time is just weeks away from closing the books on its 11th season, a season which began with Martin Short, among others, passing judgment on gun control in the U.S. — “I’m Canadian,” he said, laughing happily, more than once.

It also featured a curious program in February in which The Daily Beast editor Tina Brown and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared in the same hour.

Real Time With Bill Maher opened its 11th season with Martin Short, second from left, passing judgment on gun control in the U.S.

Just weeks ago, Real Time showed off the odd sight of Zach Galifianakis and Michael Moore debating U.S. fiscal policy with New York Times financial columnist and Too Big To Fail writer Andrew Ross Sorkin.

This time Galifianakis did not light up a fatty onscreen, as he famously did in an earlier Real Time appearance. He did, however, say more than once when the conversation took an intellectual turn, “What am I doing here?”

Real Time is taped live in front of a studio audience, and that audience does not always hang on every word Maher says. It’s one of the things that makes Real Time seem edgy and unpredictable in a way the politically minded Daily Show and The Colbert Report aren’t.

Jon Stewart can be a canny interviewer, once he ends his question, and Colbert frequently shows a streak of genius in the way he uses his faux-pundit persona to draw out unsuspecting subjects. What Stewart and Colbert lack, though, is the spark that can fly when a Salman Rushdie and a Nick Kristof are paired on the same panel with GOP pundit and CNN regular Amy Holmes, while Maher lets fly from the side.

Outrage is Maher’s calling card, and Real Time is full of outrageous moments. It’s what keeps Real Time energized as a talk show when other late-night talk shows often seem trapped in an endless loop of celebrity interviews and promotional puffery.

Real Time is having a stellar season, but it’s about to end. Enjoy the conversation while you can. Either way, the show will be back for a 12th season in the fall. (HBO, 10 ET/MT, 9 PT)

Bill Maher

Three to See

• Oprah Winfrey sits down with Jane Fonda and Fonda’s adopted daughter Mary Williams, an African-American woman who was just 14 when Fonda adopted her. The sit-down interview, for Oprah’s Last Chapter, is the first time the two have agreed to be interviewed together. (OWN, 8 ET/5 PT)

• Haunted Collector, a weird hybrid between Antiques Roadshow and Ghost Hunters, opens the trap door on a new season with demonologist John Zaffis investigating, among other things, a horse farm in Upstate New York said to be haunted by the spirit of a previous owner. (OLN, 9 ET/6 PT)

• The Voice evictee Judith Hill, Michael Jackson’s backup singer and the odds-on favourite to win the whole show just a week ago, performs on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Also scheduled: Russell Crowe. (CTV Two, NBC, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-friday-eclectic-guests-a-real-time-with-bill-maher-signature/feed0Real Time With Bill MaheralxstrachanReal Time With Bill MaharReal Time With Bill MaharReal Time With Bill MaherTV Tuesday: It’s a new season of America’s Got Talenthttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-its-a-new-season-of-americas-got-talent
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-its-a-new-season-of-americas-got-talent#respondTue, 04 Jun 2013 14:10:38 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=257004Prepare to be scared. Very scared. Melanie (Mel B) Brown, a.k.a. Scary Spice of the Spice Girls, is a judge on the new season of America’s Got Talent, beginning Tuesday.

You want weird? You want wacky? We got weird! We got wacky!

Resistance is futile.

Just grab a chair, accept that Talent is what it is and brace yourself for week after long, hot week of madness.

Summer’s biggest, noisiest TV circus is back in town — or on TV, at any rate — and once again plate spinners, performing monkeys, high-wire trapeze acts, ventriloquists’ dummies, mimes and hip-hop dance crews, too outré to qualify for So You Think You Can Dance, will be all the rage.

It’s a new a season and, thankfully, all-world sourpuss and former Talent judge Piers Morgan is but a fading memory. Sharon Osbourne parachuted out at the end of last season, reportedly miffed that parent network NBC disqualified her son Jack from participating in the network’s reality show Stars Earn Stripes, which in hindsight may have worked out for the better.

As Osbourne exits, a Spice Girl enters. One-time swimsuit model and Project Runway icon Heidi Klum also joins Talent’s judging panel, alongside returning judges Howie Mandel (who can do this kind of thing in his sleep) and the self-styled King of All Media, Howard Stern, who never met a microphone or TV camera he didn’t want to perform to.

Asked recently what makes him a good judge of talent on Talent — assuming you buy the premise — Mandel replied, without missing a beat, “Insomnia.”

That and watching TV all night, more times than he can count.

“I’ve seen it all,” Mandel said, and when that means watching community-access cable at three in the morning, that’s not hard to believe.

Klum, for her part, has admitted publicly — to Jay Leno, no less, on The Tonight Show — that judging Talent is proving more difficult than she imagined. Unlike Mandel, Klum did not waste much of her life watching late-night TV so a unicycle act called “Bike Guy” or a self-described, “roguish, operatic dandy,” named Prince Poppycock might seem more scary than talented.

As Tuesday’s inaugural two-hour audition program shows, it’s going to be a long, sweltering summer before the spotlight falls on the next Jackie Evancho, if the next Evancho is even out there.

By Labour Day, though, Talent will be down to the class acts.

Those acts may or may not include the woman who reportedly tried for five years to train her cat to sit on command, and Dr. Bob Baker, Stern’s real-life gastroenterologist, who reportedly tried out for Talent’s Manhattan auditions as a ventriloquist manhandling a colon-shaped dummy.

Hel-lo!

If recent history is anything to judge from — never a good idea, where Talent is concerned — the finals will feature at least one black-light dance crew, a singer-songwriter who probably should’ve tried out for The Voice or American Idol instead, and at least one dog act.

W. C. Fields, credited with the old show-business line “Never work with children or animals,” would have made a good judge of Talent. He would have had to modify his most famous saying, though. After last season, it would be “Never bet against children or animals.” Especially dogs. (City, NBC, 9 ET, 10 MT)

Three to See

• And now for something that seems like something you’ve seen before, but haven’t really. The new docureality series Deep South Paranormal answers the all-important question: What would you get if you crossed Duck Dynasty with Ghost Hunters? No, it’s not an SCTV sketch but an actual show. (Space, 9 ET/6 PT)

• The Real Housewives of Atlanta is back, if you’re looking for some silly summer fun or you’re working on a doctoral thesis on the Real Housewives series’ effect on popular culture. NeNe Leakes is back, too, for those who really need to know. (Slice, 10 ET/7 PT)

• David Letterman pulls out all the stops with a Late Show guest list that includes Castle actor and Edmonton native Nathan Fillion, political satirist, Daily Show correspondent and soon-to-be Daily guest host John Oliver, a Top 10 list presented by Joan Rivers and a musical performance by indie rock group Local Natives. Are you not entertained? (Omni, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-its-a-new-season-of-americas-got-talent/feed0Howie MandelalxstrachanAmerica's Got Talent - Season 8America's Got Talent - Season 8America's Got Talent - Season 8America's Got Talent - Season 7America's Got Talent - Season 7TV Monday: Controversy! Shock eliminations! These are strange days on The Voicehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-controversy-shock-eliminations-these-are-strange-days-on-the-voice
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-controversy-shock-eliminations-these-are-strange-days-on-the-voice#respondMon, 03 Jun 2013 14:00:03 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=256857These are strange days on The Voice. The official TV season ended last month, and The Voice, with two weeks still to go, is pitted against reruns and summer fluff.

First, it’s strange that The Voice has left it this late to pick a winner. The regular TV season is when ratings are measured and advertising rates are set for the fall. People still watch TV in the summer, of course, but to TV’s decision makers — and advertisers — fall, winter and spring count for more.

The Voice has the spotlight more-or-less to itself, right now, even though the TV season’s winners and losers have already been decided. Its ratings, already high, are likely to surge this week and next, and will probably crest with the finale, on June 18. The Voice’s audience skews younger than most TV talent-competition shows, boosted in part by younger viewers who’ve fled the increasingly ragged American Idol. With not much to compete against, The Voice is drawing more curiosity seekers, casual viewers who for whatever reason chose to give The Voice a miss during the regular season.

If those casual viewers watched last week, though, they saw something quite strange.

Two of the season’s strongest technical performers, including former Michael Jackson backup singer and one-time Voice frontrunner Judith Hill, were sent home, leaving a field that leans strongly toward country over pop, gospel, soul and rock. Of the remaining six singers — seven, if you count Blake Shelton’s handpicked duo The Swon Brothers as two separate voices — just two, Shakira’s Sasha Allen and Usher’s dark-horse indie favourite Michelle Chamuel, have soul and rock roots. For whatever reason TV singing competitions where the audience gets the final word lean strongly toward country artists. That may be why The Voice — and, in recent years, Idol — has yet to break out a true singing star.

Controversy can make for compelling TV, though, even when it has nothing to do with finding a singing sensation. And, last week, The Voice had controversy in spades. Hill told The Today Show, the morning after her elimination, that she felt as if she’d just lived through The Hunger Games. Hill had chosen #thatPOWER, originally popularized by will.i.am and Justin Bieber, as her performance song, a choice she admitted later might have been a mistake. Her coach-mentor Adam Levine told her, post-show, that The Voice is a game show and not to take it too seriously, that talent will win out in the end.

It was what Levine said during the show, however, caught on a live mic during the final elimination announcement, that caused the biggest stir online, on Twitter and wherever else Voice fans chose to sound off.

“I hate this country,” Levine said, half-jokingly, after two of his three remaining singers went home. The resulting Twitter-storm was reported as far away as the Guardian newspaper in the UK, which noted — presumably tongue-in-cheek — that hundreds of patriotic Voice viewers “took Levine’s whingeing as a threat to liberty, democracy and the principles of the founding fathers.”

“You’re free to leave,” one irate U.S. patriot posted on Twitter. “Try Syria. I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

Levine, for his part, tweeted back dictionary definitions of “joke,” “lighthearted” and “misunderstand.”

The following morning, he issued a statement through his publicist that read in part, “I obviously love my country very much. My comments last night were made purely out of frustration . . . I am very connected to my artists and know they have long careers ahead, regardless of their outcome on the show.”

Levine was right about one thing: the part about The Voice being a game show, and how talent is what counts in the real world. In TV terms, The Voice is a going concern, but last week the going got strange. The controversy might not do much for music, but it’ll work wonders for ratings. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Quick, who won American Idol two years ago? If you said a country artist, come on down! If you said Scotty McCreery, well, bully for you. Extra points. McCreery performs on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, following chat-show guests Neil Patrick Harris and Indy 500 champ Tony Kanaan. (CTV Two, NBC, 11:35 ET/PT)

• “Life-threatening dangers abound!” on the season finale of Revolution, and “the core group suffers another loss,” which suggests a regular character may be killed off, or else just disappear for a while. Until the fall, anyway, when Revolution returns for a second season. (City, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

• The new summer drama Mistresses is the latest U.S. adaptation of a UK original. This one features Alyssa Milano, Yunjin Kim, Jes Macallan and Rochelle Aytes in a primetime soap about a woman and her three gal pals as they navigate life, love and longing in an online world. (CTV, ABC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/tv-monday-controversy-shock-eliminations-these-are-strange-days-on-the-voice/feed0The Voice - Season 4alxstrachanThe Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4The Voice - Season 4It was the best of TV seasons … and yet …http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/it-was-the-best-of-tv-seasons-and-yet
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/it-was-the-best-of-tv-seasons-and-yet#respondTue, 21 May 2013 15:25:16 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=251610It was the best of seasons, it was the worst of seasons. The TV business has never been healthier, the TV business has never been in worse shape. It was a time of viewer discontent, it was a time viewer satisfaction.

The 2012-13 network TV season officially ended Wednesday with the finales of Modern Family, Nashville, The Middle, Criminal Minds and the series finale of The Office.

Judging from analysts’ accounts, it was arguably the most disruptive season in the history of broadcast television, with viewers continuing to defect the mainstream broadcast networks in droves, even as those very same networks laid the groundwork for more than 50 new series to come in the 2013-14 broadcast year, 27 of them this fall alone.

Smash

And yet …

The Big Bang Theory has disproven the theory that viewers have given up on broadcast TV entirely. It’s TV’s most popular program of the hour, both in the U.S. and here at home where it routinely tops the ratings, with more than three million viewers some weeks.

There are those, such as CBS Corp. president and CEO Leslie Moonves, who insists that broadcast TV is not, as some claim, an old medium being left behind by new ones but rather the centre of the media landscape, “a landscape,” Moonves reminded advertisers last week in New York, “that would be barren without us.”

Broadcast television is still the big tent, the argument goes, because it reaches into virtually every home. It’s all-pervasive and inescapable.

Even the big tent needs to be redesigned on occasion, though. Every season brings surprises, some welcome, some not. Here are five things we learned from the past season, for better or worse.

1. Numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Ratings for some of TV’s most-watched shows were down sharply, by as much as 20 per cent in some cases, in just one year.

American Idol’s live finale was down seven million viewers from 2012’s finale, for example, a drop of nearly half, to 14 million from last year’s 21 million, according to U.S. figures.

Online downloads, PVR numbers, web viewing, post-release DVD sales and social media chat forums suggest interest has never been greater in the shows we watch. Grey’s Anatomy was the second most downloaded episode of the week on iTunes Canada, second only to Mad Men.

What is changing — and that change is accelerating — is how we choose to watch. No one is talking about cancelling Grey’s Anatomy or Vampire Diaries. If they were, you’d hear about it.

2. Money matters, but it’s not all that matters.

One of TV’s most successful pilot episodes, J.J. Abrams’ Emmy Award-winning two-hour pilot episode for Lost in 2004, was the most expensive pilot episode ever made, at $11.5 million.

Big budgets don’t always guarantee long-term success, though. And some of the past year’s biggest flops were also among the most ambitious and costly, including Last Resort, 666 Park Avenue, Vegas, Zero Hour and the Broadway inspired Smash, a second-year series that officially bowed in February 2012 and ends for good this month, a shattered shard of its former self.

Smash

Instead, the first-year holdovers that will survive to see a second season include the modest — relatively speaking — Elementary, Chicago Fire and Nashville.

The moral: Story and character trump budget every time.

3. Specialty channels are no longer just for viewers with specialized tastes.

Years from now, industry analysts may well look at two dates — Oct. 19, 2012 and Feb. 10, 2013 — as being a turning point in the battle between broadcast television and the specialty channels.

The first is when The Walking Dead drew a record 10.9 million viewers to its third-season premiere on the U.S. cable channel AMC. It was one of the most-watched programs on TV that night, on any channel. The second date is when Walking Dead returned from its winter break, this time to 12.3 million viewers.

The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead did not walk alone. The History Channel’s The Bible broke ratings records, too, and incredibly drew nearly 12 million U.S. viewers to its two-hour conclusion on Easter Sunday — despite being matched directly opposite the season premiere of Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead’s season finale.

Over the course of its entire run, The Bible — which few expected to be a ratings competitor — outdrew most broadcast network series on Sunday nights, traditionally the most crowded, competitive night of the TV week.

The Walking Dead

4. Numbers don’t tell the whole story, Part 2.

The real difference between broadcast television and the cable channels can be simply and starkly summed up as the difference between Revolution, a serialized ensemble drama about a handful of stragglers struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and The Walking Dead, a serialized ensemble drama about a handful of stragglers struggling to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape. One is tense, tightly wound, beautifully written, well acted, often unforgettable and at times profound. The other is Revolution.

Revolution

5. Midseason is the new September, and not necessarily for the better.

Once again, the broadcast networks are holding back some of their biggest offerings of the 2013-14 broadcast season for midseason, not the fall, traditionally the time the networks made the biggest noise.

This past midseason proved to be one long train wreck, however, with just one modest success — the Kevin Bacon thriller The Following — and more failures than will fit comfortably here.

The Following

There were other pointers to be taken from the past season, of course.

• Viewers are no longer as keen on reruns as they once were. Again, the ubiquity of online download options, often from networks’ own websites has a lot to do with that.

Next season, expect shorter seasons for many shows, and more shows that split their seasons into two uninterrupted halves: 11 consecutive episodes in the fall, followed by a break lasting several weeks, followed by the remaining episodes in a 11-week consecutive run in the spring.

• Waning interest in Idol and, to a lesser extent, The X Factor, suggests that media hype over the judges — Britney Spears! Mariah Carey! — might not be as important to viewers as the singers themselves. Cue The Voice, which managed to find a sizable audience even as the other singing shows were losing theirs.

American Idol

• TV vampires are sexier, more attractive and more fun to follow than movie vampires — for the time being, anyway.

They also live longer. The Vampire Diaries will see the light of day for a fifth season this fall, even as The Twilight Saga fades into the darkness of memory.

The Vampire Diaries

Some things in TV never change, though. Success breeds imitation. As the late comedian Fred Allen once pointed out, imitation is the sincerest form of television.

The Vampire Diaries will have a companion and soulmate this fall, starting in October: The Diaries spinoff The Originals, set in 18th century New Orleans and featuring Diaries’ Joseph Morgan as Niklaus Mikaelson, one of the world’s original vampires.

The Originals

The Originals may be a spinoff, but at least the title is original. No other series has been called The Originals. Not in this world, anyway.

Back in the early ’70s, ground zero in the generational wars, Reiner played oafish son-in-law Michael Stivic opposite Carroll O’Connor’s Archie Bunker, a conservative, judgmental bigot who worshipped U.S. president Richard Nixon and regarded Meathead as a lazy, shiftless hippie with low morals and no prospects. Less-than-ideal marriage material for his daughter, in other words.

The daughter figure is once again the centre of attention in New Girl, a new show for a new age. The generation gap is still there, though. This time, as played with an irrepressible energy and youthful vitality by Zooey Deschanel, the daughter is a generation Y keener, a starry-eyed idealist unapologetically and unrealistically hopeful about her future, even as her job prospects dim and her love life hits the skids.

Zooey Deschanel

TV’s longest running, most fondly remembered sitcoms tend to be about characters who don’t play well in the sandbox together, and there’s nothing like the generation gap to touch off family quarrels.

And while New Girl is not All in the Family — it’s nearing the end of only its second season, for starters — Reiner’s appearance is a reminder that TV has a way of referencing the past while reflecting the temperature of the times. Reiner may be pushing 67 — Deschanel is 33 — but anyone who saw All in the Family at the time will recognize the artist formerly known as Michael Stivic in a heartbeat. Reiner is an accomplished writer, actor, director and film producer, but to many viewers he will always be Meathead.

Tuesday’s episode finds Bob Day dropping in unexpectedly on his daughter, on the very day she’s lined up a promising new job opportunity. She doesn’t have time to deal with her clingy dad, so he spends the day alone with an increasingly nervous Nick (Jake Johnson). Meanwhile, Nick’s roommate Winston (Lamorne Morris) can’t wait for the surprise birthday party his friends have prepared for him, unaware that they’ve forgotten about his birthday altogether.

Zooey Deschanel, left, with Curtis Armstrong

New Girl is affable and charming, if not always as funny as it could be. It’s lightweight and insignificant, but it has managed to enchant a new generation of viewers with its deft combination of quirkiness and heady optimism. It will never be the mainstream hit All in the Family was — these are different times, after all — but it has a certain cross-generational appeal. As Reiner’s appearance shows, what is old can sometimes be new again. (City, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Three to See

• Ever patient, mild-mannered chef Gordon Ramsay OBE announces Hell’s Kitchen will host its first-ever quinceañera — a decision, as it turns out, that ranks right up there in the pantheon of Very Bad Ideas. But then you probably expected that, the moment Ramsay announced it. (City, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Confusion alert! As if viewers didn’t have enough trouble keeping track of what’s left of Smash — NBC switched the low-rated Broadway show to Saturdays, to burn off the remaining episodes on a night no one is watching — now NBC has thrown a switch with Grimm, one of the network’s few success stories. Grimm has moved to Tuesdays, to take advantage of the enormous lead-in audience provided by The Voice. Hey, it worked for Revolution. (CTV Two, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

• Now there’s coincidence for you. Deschanel is David Letterman’s lead guest on The Late Show. Also scheduled: comedian Jim Gaffigan, and a musical performance by Pistol Annies and Todd Rundgren. (Omni, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT)

There was bad-boy comedian Andy Dick, gamely bidding a tearful goodbye as the final judgment came in and he realized that, no, he would not be bringing home Dancing With the Stars’ glitterball trophy after all. Let’s face it: Dick deserves credit for making it as far on Dancing’s 16th season as he did.

Andy Dick, top, with Sharna Burgess

There was host Tom Bergeron, gamely telling viewers that, provided they didn’t change the channel after the show, they could watch Amanda Knox give her first sit-down TV interview, to 20/20’s Diane Sawyer. Talk about corporate synergy at work. Perhaps Knox will be a future celebrity on Dancing With the Stars.

There was dance pro Mark Ballas, gamely repeating his salsa from the night before at the judges’ insistence, despite a neck injury — two compressed vertebrae! — after Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman, and there’s no delicate way to put this, landed square on Ballas’s head during their routine a mere 24 hours earlier.

There was former American Idol contestant Kellie Pickler, gamely hanging in there after winning immunity from elimination. Pickler considers herself a country artist first and a Dancing With the Stars contestant second. No matter. Improbable as it may have seemed just a few short weeks ago, Pickler now looks like a real possibility to make it to Dancing’s final week, on May 21. Pluck counts for a lot on Dancing With the Stars, clearly.

In the real world, though, the bloom is off Dancing’s rose. Ratings have slipped this season, both in the U.S., where the all-important scheduling decisions are made, and here, where the once top-ranked Dancing has fallen behind The Voice, Idol, Survivor and Amazing Race in the weekly ratings sweepstakes.

Andy Dick, right, with Sharna Burgess

It’s telling that this year, for the first time, CTV relocated The Voice, now in its live competition phase, to the main network, and consigned Dancing to its sister station, CTV Two, which reaches fewer homes.

Dancing faces its stiffest competition yet, right now. And not just because The Voice is finally into the live shows. Playoff hockey will dominate viewing habits weeks to come, at least until hometown rooting interests in Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal are knocked out. At any other time of the year, NHL hockey and Dancing don’t appeal to the same audience. Now, though, with Dancing down to the wire and playoff hockey playing meaningful games, those fights over the remote are likely to get a lot more spirited.

Dancing With the Stars

Ratings may be down, but this has been a strange and weirdly unpredictable season for one of reality TV’s oldest, grandest and most consistent competition programs. The outside world has intruded in ways it hasn’t in previous seasons. There was the guest appearance last week, for example, by ballroom dancer Adrianne Haslet, who lost half her leg in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15. Haslet vowed to dance again, possibly on Dancing With the Stars’ 17th season, this fall.

There was more where that came from, too. Tearful moments abounded. Last week’s Dancing included an inspiring profile of Camden, N.J., teacher Tawanda Jones, who uses dance to encourage children from disadvantaged backgrounds to get a fresh start on life. Thoughtful, aspirational — who would’ve imagined that from a reality TV show?

Dancing With the Stars

Ratings don’t count for everything. Dancing may not be the cultural lightning rod it once was, but it’s still compelling. It’s not about who wins in the end but about the journey there. Sometimes, the cliché fits. (CTV Two, ABC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Rihanna 777 is part concert film, part behind-the-scenes promotional video as the recording artist and soul singer boards a Boeing 777 with 200 or so of her fans for a seven-concerts-in-seven-days concert tour through seven cities, including Toronto. Gimmicky, yes, but some sweet sounds just the same. (Fox, 8 ET/PT)

• How I Met Your Mother continues the countdown to its May 13 eighth-season finale with an episode called Something Old, in which Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) tries to bond with his future father-in-law (guest star Ray Wise). The finale, as you might have guessed, is called Something New. Sounds like the wedding is on. (City, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• How you can tell The Office is about to close for good: The cast is making the late-night talk-show rounds, starting this week. Monday, John Krasinski (Jim) appears on The Late Show With David Letterman, while Jenna Fischer (Pam) appears on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. The Office’s official finale is May 16. (Letterman, Omni, CBS, 11:35 ET/PT; Fallon, CTV Two, NBC, 12:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-dancing-with-the-stars-footloose-and-fancy-free-and-serious-too/feed0Dancing With the StarsalxstrachanDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsDancing With the StarsTV Tuesday: Deadliest Catch pits young against oldhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-pits-young-against-old
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-pits-young-against-old#respondTue, 30 Apr 2013 06:20:03 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=238097Deadliest Catch is the granddaddy of blue-collar, outdoor working shows and one could be forgiven for thinking that, after nine easons, stories about cash-strapped crab fishermen trying to eke out a living from some of the roughest seas known to humankind would get a little old.

As last week’s brooding, eerily dramatic season-opener proved, though, each new crab season brings with it new worries, new complications and new conflicts. About the only thing the fishing fleet can expect is wildly unpredictable weather. Expect the unexpected.

The crab season opens in October — Deadliest Catch airs during the summer, presumably to give armchair adventurers a break from the inevitable summer heat wave — and this latest season follows a year in which uncommonly cold sea conditions left fishing boats’ decks encrusted in ice as the crews battled 12-metre seas, hurricane force winds and frequent ice storms.

Deadliest Catch

The fleet took a battering. When the latest season opened, some of the boats were still undergoing costly repairs, their crews unable to put out to sea.

Debts were piling up for those who did make it, and at least one crab fisherman, deckhand Josh Harris, is hoping to reclaim the legacy — personal and financial — left by his late father, Capt. Phil Harris, captain and part owner of the crab-fishing boat Cornelia Marie. The older Harris died in February 2010, weeks after he suffered a stroke while off-loading his opilio king crab catch in an Alaska harbour.

As with any regulated industry, the annual crab fishery is dictated by quotas and official openings. The new season is all about the blue king crab, a particularly ornery and hard-to-find critter — “elusive and less profitable,” as one boat captain put it — that demands hard work, dedication and nerves of steel to reel in.

Deadliest Catch

If the stakes seem unusually high this season, that’s because the combination of an economic slowdown and treacherous winter conditions the previous year have put a dent in the crews’ hopes, and shortened fuses to next-to-nothing.

This season’s conflict was established before the boats even put out of port. Deadliest Catch is all about the clash between generations this season — young versus old, youth versus experience — and how old hands, desperate to cling to their livelihoods, show little patience for wet-behind-the-ears upstarts who are all attitude and no work ethic.

“I think that’s lost on the younger generation,” a veteran boat captain mused aloud to the camera in last week’s opener. “Somebody makes a mistake up here, they get washed over the side.”

There’s nothing wishy-washy about Deadliest Catch. The action is real. Real lives are genuinely at stake. Nearly a decade ago, producer Thom Beers hired cameramen and sound technicians with experience shooting outdoors, many of them in war zones, men and women who understood what it meant to put one’s life on the line to get that perfect shot of other people willingly putting themselves in harm’s way.

Deadliest Catch

Deadliest Catch is both heart-stopping entertainment and a telling sociological study of what some people will go through to put food on the table for their families, especially in lean times.

“More guys are going broke than ever before,” one boat captain explained in last week’s opener.

“All my money’s in this boat,” said another. “But it’s still not fine tuned.”

He had no choice but to head out to sea, though. “You have to go fish to make money.”

Deadliest Catch might be in its ninth season but the truth is, this never gets old. (Discovery, 10 ET/PT)

Deadliest Catch

Three to See

• Amanda Knox, the young Seattle student whose conviction for the 2009 murder of her English roommate in Perugia, Italy, was overturned after Knox served four years of a 26-year sentence, sits down with Diane Sawyer on 20/20. It’s Knox’s first TV interview since her return to the U.S., and comes just weeks after Italian authorities have reopened the case on appeal and are demanding her return to face a new trial. On one level, it’s just one more squalid story dragged out in the public spotlight. On another more meaningful level, it’s a cautionary tale about the clash of cultures, how trial laws differ from continent to continent, and the danger of jumping to conclusions. The Knox story was made into a perfectly awful TV movie, which should never have been made in the first place — not when so many questions are unanswered, and even basic facts of the case remain in dispute. It would be nice, too, if the name Meredith Kercher is mentioned, even in passing. It’s her story that really needs to be told, after all. (ABC, 10 ET/PT)

• The Voice faces its toughest competition yet, on the second night of the knockout rounds. No, not American Idol. The Stanley Cup playoffs. A few short months ago it looked as if there wouldn’t be an NHL season, let alone playoffs. Now The Voice, TV’s most avidly followed, buzzed-about reality show faces real competition, on the first night of a playoff round that, for the first time in what seems like ages, doesn’t boast an obvious front-runner. And, yes, the two audiences do cross over. You don’t get to be one of the most-watched weekly programs on Canadian TV without drawing at least a few hockey fans. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• It’s never a good sign when a diner in an upscale restaurant finds a hair in her food. When that diner is eating steak on Hell’s Kitchen, on steak night no less, and chef Gordon Ramsay OBE is hovering in the kitchen, well … all hell is about to break loose. (City, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 10 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-deadliest-catch-pits-young-against-old/feed0Deadliest CatchalxstrachanDeadliest CatchDeadliest CatchDeadliest CatchDeadliest CatchTV Monday: The Following season finalehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-following-season-finale
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-following-season-finale#respondMon, 29 Apr 2013 06:29:53 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=237917Joe Carroll is having a bad day. The brainy academic, serial murder, cult leader and Edgar Allan Poe obsessive has had a wine bottle broken over his head and been stabbed in the side with a dinner fork by his ex-wife. His minions just will not listen to him, no matter how often he tells them the politically correct way to kill people. He’s a serial killer on a mission, but that mission keeps going utterly, hopelessly wrong.

And you thought you were having a bad day.

At least you haven’t been reduced to mumbling apologies like “I’ve been a tad erratic of late” or “I’ve been insensitive and inappropriate.”

As bad as Carroll’s day has been, though, it may be about to get a lot worse.

The Following ends its first season Monday, with a second season already on the books for fall, and Carroll (James Purefoy) is not going to have it all his own way, no matter how charismatic and scheming he is.

Kevin Bacon, left, and Shawn Ashmore

The finale is called The Final Chapter, which implies finality but will probably end in a cliffhanger. The Following, the most manipulative and cynical thriller on TV right now, is all about its cliffhanger endings. In its 14 episodes so far, this tale of a charismatic cult leader and his flock of like-minded murderers, has staked a claim as TV’s most irritating thriller, in which smart people do dumb things and every story twist either morphs into a red herring or turns down a blind alley.

The Following’s saving grace is a pair of terrific actors — Purefoy as Carroll and always-believable Kevin Bacon as hard-luck ex-FBI man Ryan Hardy — who manage to make the silliest material seem meaningful.

Shawn Ashmore, right

The Following may be dumb, you see, but the people who make it are anything but. It hails from the creator of the Scream movies. As with the original Scream, the violence is deliberately stylized and over-the-top. Movie cliches abound in a knowing, nudge-nudge-wink-wink way. The Following assumes you’ve seen countless other slasher movies and TV chillers, so it delights in toying with your emotions.

Valorie Curry, left, and Natalie Zea

That’s what makes it so irritating — and why, when the murderer escapes yet again, it’s all one can do not to turn the channel.

The Following is violent, ugly and mean-spirited. It thinks nothing of putting children in jeopardy, even if it is just a fictional thriller, and features as much blood spatter as is allowable on a conventional broadcast network. It’s notably lacking in humour, grace, acts of kindness, human decency — or any kind of humanity.

And yet … audiences love this stuff.

Kyle Catlett, left, and Natalie Zea

Whether for sociological reasons, or perhaps because The Following moves at a brisk clip and is exceedingly well made, it has struck a nerve with viewers tired of more mundane TV crime shows. Earlier this month The Following ranked in the Top 20 of that week’s most-watched prime-time programs in Canada, with 1.3 million viewers. That’s more viewers than watched the results shows for both The Voice and American Idol, more than watched Murdoch Mysteries — in the same time period — and more than tuned in to see the late Saturday game on Hockey Night in Canada.

The Following’s season finale is well-timed, if a coincidence: It ends the night before the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs, all but guaranteeing a large audience.

The Following may not be particularly classy, either as a TV thriller or any other kind of entertainment, but it’s certainly made its mark.

And now, with a second season confirmed, there will be more where that came from. You asked for it, and you got it. (CTV, Fox, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

Natalie Zea

Three to See

• The Voice reaches the knockout rounds in Monday’s two-hour program, but unlike a certain other singing competition, this contest is still anyone’s to win. A last-minute programming note: Parent network NBC has added a pair of shows this week, Wednesday and Thursday, that won’t appear in most TV listings, since the decision was made suddenly and without warning. There’s now a direct, head-to-head conflict between The Voice and American Idol, so you’ll want to watch for that if you’re following one program instead of the other. (CTV Two, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• The Big C winds down its thoughtful, heartfelt three-season character study of a high-school teacher (Laura Linney) dealing with stage IV melanoma with a four-part series finale, Hereafter, in which Cathy Jamison (Linney) finally accepts her fate and reaches out to her family one last time. One of TV’s most affecting dramas. Super Channel (10 ET/7 PT)

• The dastardly Christopher Pelant (guest star Andrew Leeds) returns to Bones for the series’ eighth-season finale, when a string of murders is connected to Booth (David Boreanaz). Complicating affairs — it’s a season finale; there are always complicated affairs — Brennan (Emily Deschanel) begins to rethink her relationship with Booth, after the evidence against him mounts. You know how this one ends — Booth is the show’s hero, after all — but, hey, it’s TV. Roll with it. (Global, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-following-season-finale/feed0The FollowingalxstrachanThe FollowingThe FollowingThe FollowingThe FollowingThe FollowingTV Wednesday: American Idol finds its voicehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-finds-its-voice
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-finds-its-voice#respondWed, 24 Apr 2013 06:41:10 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=235403At last. American Idol has found its voice. The excruciating — and often cruel — audition shows are just another bad memory, and so is Idol’s horrific Hollywood Week, with its pointless group numbers, bickering contestants forced to perform together and the crying room.

The recent pattern with these rival TV singing competitions is that Idol starts slow in the ratings, then picks up as it goes along, while The Voice bursts out of the gate early — the so-called blind auditions are arguably The Voice’s most compelling feature — then fades down the stretch, as audiences realize that watching seasoned performers striving for that elusive second chance isn’t as compelling as watching a diamond in the rough reach for stardom.

And this season, based on the evidence of last week’s final five performance show, is suddenly showing signs of being a watershed moment in a series, now in its 12th season, that was getting a little old.

Kree Harrison

It’s not because of the new judges, either, even though Nicki Minaj has reminded Idol watchers just what an assertive, opinionated, unpredictable yet authoritative point of view can bring to the table. There were moments during last week’s performance show when the other judges looked dazed and confused in comparison. Minaj is unafraid to tell it like it is, even when the consensus is against her. Idol original Randy Jackson has looked like dead weight at times this season, but last week he served a useful purpose: By seating his bulk between Minaj and Mariah Carey, he managed to keep them physically separated. The law of physics in action.

Idol is not about the judges, though. Not at this point of the season. It’s about the singers. And this year, for the first time in what seems like centuries — Idol feels as if it’s been around forever but it’s only been 12 years — the final four singers, all women, could be the real thing.

True stardom is elusive in the music business. Just ask any number of previous Idol winners, if you doubt that — the ones you haven’t heard from in years. It’s probably a little unfair to say this season will produce a star, but it’s hard to remember a year when Idol had such a strong, technically proficient final four.

Amber Holcomb

There’s a reason Minaj used the word “perfection” to describe soul diva Amber Holcomb’s show-closing, heart-stopping rendition of Barbra Streisand’s What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life? last week. It was so ballsy, so out-of-left-field — Idol is usually all about screechy over-singing and blasting out the big notes — and so out-of-sync with the other song choices on Idol’s Diva Night, that it was hard not to wonder if, like Streisand herself in the 1976 film remake of A Star is Born, people might one day be singing Holcomb’s praises in music arenas in the real world.

Idol started slow this year, as in other recent seasons. A remarkable thing has happened in recent weeks, though. Season-long front-runner Angie Miller has faded down the stretch. Country artist Kree Harrison has hit all the country marks and made all the right moves, and shows early signs of crossover appeal.

It’s the back-of-the-pack soul divas, though, Holcomb and Candice Glover, who’ve jumped to the fore in recent weeks. Simon Cowell is fond of saying the most likely singer to win Idol in any given season is the singer who grows most over time, and not the one who was the front-runner from the start.

On her official Idol bio, Holcomb, 19, cites Whitney Houston, Karen Carpenter and Celine Dion as being her personal musical influences — that’s an eclectic trio right there, especially for a gospel-trained soul singer — and says music has inspired her much of her waking life.

“It’s kinda what keeps me going every day,” she says. “When you see me, I’m either listening to music or singing to myself. Music makes my life that much more worth living.”

• Just when Survivor fans thought they had seen it all, last week’s tribal council on Survivor Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites sprang a surprise for the ages: a three-way hidden-immunity-idol play that had everyone from host Jeff Probst and the remaining castaways to the viewers watching at home scratching their heads, adding new meaning to the phrase “Did. Not. See. That. Coming.” Survivor has gone through a few rough patches this season, but it’s ending on a high note. The finale is May 12. Mark the date, if you’re so inclined. (Global, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• If it looks like a guy in a duck suit, walks like a guy in a duck suit and quacks like a guy in a duck suit, it must be Duck Dynasty. The season finale of the improbably popular docureality series is Tuesday, answering the question: What people are watching when they’re not glued to the set during Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Jersey Shore? (A&E, 10 ET/7 PT)

• A year ago, CBC had its prime-time schedule ready-made. It would air its regular shows until early April and then hockey, hockey, hockey. Only the NHL had the bad taste to throw in a labour dispute, throwing a curve into those carefully laid plans. You’ll still get hockey, hockey, hockey, but it’s been pushed back a week. That’s why Murdoch Mysteries makes a rare Wednesday appearance this week. The episode is a repeat of the season opener, in which intrepid Det. Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) investigates a plane crash, circa the late 19th century, long before airline food and airport delays when human-controlled flight really was all about those magnificent men in their flying machines. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-finds-its-voice/feed0American IdolalxstrachanAmerican IdolAmerican IdolAmerican IdolTV Tuesday: Ken Burns revisits The Central Park Fivehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-ken-burns-revisits-the-central-park-five
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-ken-burns-revisits-the-central-park-five#commentsTue, 16 Apr 2013 06:57:53 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=230010During his 30 years as one of the world’s premier documentarians, Ken Burns has produced one thoughtful, uplifting film after another, from his poetic treatment in Jazz to his fan’s eye view in Baseball. It’s a body of work that ranges from historical epics like The Civil War to the personal portrayal of rural farm workers struggling to overcome terrible odds in The Dust Bowl. His films share a common humanity and idea that, come what may, each and every one of us, when faced with terrible choices, will make the right decision.

That’s why The Central Park Five, his documentary — co-directed by Burns’s grown daughter, Sarah Burns — about five African-American and Latino teenagers wrongfully convicted of a brutal rape in New York City’s Central Park in 1989 — is such a jolt. Burns’s passions are inflamed not just by the miscarriage of justice but by the tabloid media frenzy and the public rush to judgment that followed. The Central Park Five finds dignity and humanity, all right, but it’s the dignity and humanity of five men who were locked away for a crime they didn’t commit, yet who managed to emerge, at the end of it all, bowed but largely unbroken.

Accused rapist Yusef Salaam is escorted by police.

It’s a difficult story, both to watch and listen to and, as it turned out, to make. Earlier this year, in a meeting with TV critics, Burns admitted that many of the sponsors who normally flock to his films looked the other way on The Central Park Five. The subject matter was too grim, too downcast, too dark and complex. The Central Park Five is the kind of subject matter more commonly seen in an expose on 60 Minutes The Fifth Estate; it’s the kind of outrage that makes advocacy groups like The Innocence Project so necessary, if the criminal justice system is doing the right thing.

Daily News front pageBurns is a skilled storyteller, however, and The Central Park Five is no dirge. He’s angry. And his daughter, who made it her life project, is angry too, but they’re not scolds. The Central Park Five tells the story of the events of April 19, 1989, in the words of the five men who lived to tell the tale. This is pure documentary filmmaking, with none of the hectoring narration or mawkish music that marks so many lesser programs of its kind. The Central Park Five is not easy to watch, but it’s must-see TV just the same, because in its own complex way it’s as life-affirming and inspirational as any of Burns’s previous films.

“At the heart of this are five human beings who were (characterized) as animals, brutes, beasts, all the language of Jim Crow America at the end of the 19th and early 20th century,” Burns said earlier this year. “But they were real human beings.

“We asked two simple questions: One, what actually happened that night of April 19, 1989, and in the weeks and months afterwards. And, two, who were these people? That was it, really.”

DNA evidence eventually fingered the real culprit in the crime, in 2002. The Central Park Five’s convictions were vacated, but not until they had served out their time.

The Central Park Five focuses in part on the police interrogations at the time.

“You have to remember they were 14, 15 and a developmentally challenged 16-year-old,” Burns said, “with seasoned detectives, for upwards of 30 hours without food, without water, usually without parents and certainly none of that with a lawyer present.”

Ken Burns

Confessions were coerced, and from there the story took on a life of its own. The media did not exactly cover themselves in glory, Burns noted.

“The interesting thing to me is that the press were complicit in this, from the original buying of the story and then, with their exoneration, not being willing to admit their culpability in it, so that there was a palpable silence. Most of the press shrank from the mea culpa that was necessary, I think, to give their exoneration the attention it deserved, given the hatchet job that was done on them at the time,” Burns said.

A civil suit is still before the courts.

“It’s a case of 13 years of justice denied, followed by 10 years of justice delayed,” Burns continued. “More often than not, in scratching the surface of American history with our films, we’ve dealt with race. This is certainly about that. I think this story speaks volumes about America and our tortured racial history. There are many, many themes at work here. This is a (story) that in and of itself had so many inconsistencies that any one of us, without having watched a Law & Order episode in our lives, could go, ‘Wait a second.’ And yet no cop, no prosecutor and no reporter challenged it.” (PBS, 9 ET/PT)

Three to See

• All-world curmudgeon, political commentator and occasional The Daily Show contributor Lewis Black hosts a Just for Laughs comedy showcase labelled The American Dream? featuring politically-driven bits by standup comics Kathleen Madigan, Al Rae, Alonzo Bodden, Andrew Maxwell and John Wing. All the outrage of The Central Park Five, but with more irony. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• CBC continues to clear out its season finales, in preparation for two months of professional hockey, with ads. Tuesday, it’s Cracked’s turn, as Det. Aidan Black (David Sutcliffe) and Dr. Ridley (Stefanie von Pfetten) investigate the apparent murder of a man married to a prominent human rights lawyer. Despite weaker-than-expected ratings, CBC will bring back Cracked for a second season, the network recently announced. Patience is a virtue, and sometimes it’s rewarded. (CBC, 9 ET/PT)

• The Voice is just warming up, even as that other TV singing competition nears the end of the road. Tuesday is the second night of the so-called battle rounds, in which mentors Adam Levine, Usher, Shakira and Blake Shelton whittle down their teams with the help of Grammy winning music artists and music experts Sheryl Crow (Shelton), Hillary Scott (Levine), Pharrell Williams (Usher) and Voice Australia coach Joel Madden (Shakira). Not the strongest part of The Voice’s season but worth seeing just the same, if only for the added wrinkle of “the Steal,” in which coaches can poach singers their rival coaches have chosen to cast aside. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-ken-burns-revisits-the-central-park-five/feed1The Central Park FivealxstrachanThe Central Park FiveThe Central Park FiveThe Central Park FiveTV cancellation watch: Which shows will be renewed, and which will get the axe?http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-cancellation-watch-which-shows-will-be-renewed-and-which-will-get-the-axe
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-cancellation-watch-which-shows-will-be-renewed-and-which-will-get-the-axe#respondThu, 11 Apr 2013 12:26:01 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=229579Go On turned off the lights, probably temporarily but possibly permanently, this week with yet another early season finale. The Matthew Perry sitcom, in which Perry played a recent widower and sports-radio jock who returns to work after an extended leave, sums up the craziness of the past TV season as aptly as any struggling sitcom or drama.

Broadcast television has always been a dog-eat-dog world, where profitable, highly rated programs thrive and money-losing, low-rated programs are cancelled and die.

Increasingly, however, on-the-bubble programs — those shows that are neither hits nor failures — face the axe, in part because of the growing cost to make them and in part because the audience is increasingly distracted, not just because of competition from an ever-growing number of cable channels but also technology itself. The more ways there are to watch a TV program, the less people choose to watch TV the old-fashioned way, by making an appointment, gathering the family and sitting in front of the TV together.

Matthew Perry in Go On

This past season’s crop of new dramas and comedies was a catastrophe for the mainstream broadcast networks. Every network claims to have scored at least one hit out of the dozens of new offerings that bowed last fall and earlier this year, in midseason. The truth, though, is that not one connected with an audience the way Desperate Housewives and Lost did in 2004, nearly 10 years ago. Aging hits like Grey’s Anatomy and CSI continue to draw a crowd, but there’s growing concern among the executives who program the TV networks’ schedules that the days of the mass-audience hit may be numbered.

April has become the new May, where struggling series air their finales, weeks before the traditional end of the season in mid May. Increasingly, broadcast TV’s marquee events in May are live sports — such as the Stanley Cup playoffs — and the finales of big-ticket, high-profile — and often live — talent competition programs like The Voice, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol.

Matthew Perry in Go On

Go On is expected to return when parent network NBC unveils its official 2013-14 winter schedule on May 13, in New York. Go On airs in Canada on Global TV, and it will likely be back on Global’s lineup as well, when that network announces its fall schedule in June.

Go On was nowhere near the hit with viewers that Friends was in the mid to late 1990s, even though it starred one of the most popular Friends — Perry.

Partly it’s because viewers couldn’t relate to Perry’s character in Go On, self-absorbed sportscaster Ryan King, the way they could to Chandler Bing in Friends. Go On didn’t connect with a wide audience because it was neither as funny as Friends nor as wise, in the way Friends reflected the hopes and dreams of a generation.

Go On

Go On failed to click with a mass audience for another, more telling, reason. The way network dramas and sitcoms are shown has changed. The days when viewers could expect a new episode each week, without interruption, for months at a time are long gone.

Go On bowed last August, in the middle of the Summer Olympics, with the kind of promotional push that only the Olympics can deliver. It then disappeared for a month and returned in September, only to vanish again in October, this time for three weeks.

Go On returned in November, then took more than a month off during the holidays and returned earlier this year, and it ran, more or less uninterrupted, until this past week’s finale, to middling ratings.

Go On will likely return, however, for reasons that have little to do with how many people were watching. They are many of the same reasons why other on-the-bubble sitcoms like Happy Endings, Guys With Kids, Up All Night and 1600 Penn will not return.

Go On airs on a flailing parent network — NBC — so desperate for hits that it will be willing to stick with a familiar face and proven TV commodity, Perry, in the hopes that new comedies can be built around it.

TV series are not just renewed or cancelled based on their numbers alone. Other factors include the cost, whether it gains or drops viewers from the show airing before it, how close it is to being sold to rerun syndication — about 100 episodes, on average — and where it fits into its parent network’s overall strategy and brand messaging. Go On is a not-so-subtle reminder to NBC viewers of the network’s glory years, when Perry starred in Friends and NBC’s Thursday lineup included Frasier, Seinfeld and ER.

Each U.S. network faces similar decisions in the next two weeks, and what the execs decide will directly affect Global, CTV and City’s schedules in the fall. (CBC has already tipped its fall plans, a basically stand-pat schedule that features more new episodes of Murdoch Mysteries and Republic of Doyle, the return of Battle of the Blades, and one surprise: the return of the relatively low-rated drama Cracked.)

CBS must decide what to do with on-the-bubble show Rules of Engagement. NBC faces a similar quandary with Community and Whitney, like ABC does with How to Live With Your Parents (For the Rest of Your Life) and Malibu Country.

Community

Previously on-the-bubble sitcoms The Neighbors, Suburgatory and Last Man Standing are all expected to return. Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, Partners, Ben and Kate, Animal Practice and Do No Harm have already been cancelled.

The U.S. networks unveil their fall schedules the week of May 12. Canadian networks CTV, Global and City follow in early June.

Erica Gimpel: Yes, I have. I went on kind of a spiritual training course. I’ve been a practicing Buddhist for 26 years so I went there as sort of a deepening of an understanding of my practice.

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. Let’s recap your last album.

Erica Gimpel: The album is called Spread Your Wings and Fly and that title song is my anthem for women. The inspiration for it was an organization here in Los Angeles called The Downtown Women’s Centreand it’s helped for the last 30 years women who have been homeless on the streets get permanent housing and kind of get them back on their feet. What I had conceptualized was a benefit concert honouring and really supporting the end of homelessness. And honouring the organization too for all the great work they’ve been doing.

And for me personally, the record, the journey is a lot of things. It’s an appreciation I have for my parents; love; having love in life; being loved; romantic love. It’s a very personal journey and something that I wanted to do for a long time.

MMA Crossfire: It comes across as elegant and classy. I like the track Rising.

Erica Gimpel: Thanks. That came from a friend of mine who is a wonderful musician and had a jam session in her house. Some of the greatest musicians in L.A. would show up there and jam in her house for hours. I started that as a jam at her house and then just evolved it to the tune you heard.

MMA Crossfire: I see. And obviously you were involved in all aspects of the record. Is that side just as enjoyable as the creative side?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, I mean the producing of the record took it to a whole other level of listening. The playing of it, shaping it so that it shines in the best light. So there’s different aspects of the songs. How can we bring it out the various qualities of the song.

MMA Crossfire: Right. And then after that album, you were still doing your thing in the other avenues.

Erica Gimpel: I just did three episodes of Nikita. I’m not sure you knew that…

Erica Gimpel and Maggie Q in a scene on the TV show Nikita. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. That’s how I thought you contacted me. Yeah, I was in Canada for some months, in Toronto and that was a really great experience, a great character. And I also am working on the show Criminal Mindshere in the United States…

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I’ve heard of Criminal Minds.

Erica Gimpel: Yes, that show.

MMA Crossfire: So when you did Nikita, was that your first time in Toronto?

Erica Gimpel: Yes it was my first time.

MMA Crossfire: Did you get a chance to visit anything?

Erica Gimpel: It was really difficult honestly, because of the hours of the show. I really wanted to go to the galleries. I mean I would go out to different restaurants and stuff, but I didn’t get to see as much as I wanted.

MMA Crossfire: Well maybe next time, because I think would be a great choice for one of your concerts…

Erica Gimpel: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

MMA Crossfire:Peter Ustinov once said Toronto is New York City run by the Swiss.

Erica Gimpel: (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: It’s one big melting pot and it seems to share a lot of attributes with your hometown there.

Erica Gimpel: The jazz bassist? She’s insanely amazing. I don’t know if you saw the Oscars this year, she sang What a Wonderful World at the Oscars this year. She’s one of the leading jazz bassists of our time she’s 23-years-old. She’s incredible.

Musician Esperanza Spalding.

MMA Crossfire: I’ll have to check her out. Anyone else that strikes you?

Erica Gimpel: An artist that inspires me right now… Actually it was a dialogue that really inspired me. Do you know who Tavis Smiley is? He has his own show here in the United States.

MMA Crossfire: Yes, of course.

Erica Gimpel: Tavis Smiley had a really amazing conversation with Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer when they were nominated for the Oscar for the film The Help. It was an incredible dialogue and it really inspired me as an artist. Viola Davis was saying how especially as a woman of color, especially in America – and I don’t know if it’s the same for Canada – sometimes there’s this really big pressure to play someone who’s upstanding, who has nobility, who’s respectful, who is a wonderful thing. Because a lot of time characters are not written in that way or you feel a sense you want to have that kind of strength and respect. But she said human beings are messy. We have dark moments, we have light moments, and we have all sorts of things. And she was saying as an actor, she’s like, ‘I want to play all of that. I want to play all the palette of humanity. I don’t want to have to be limited to just this kind of way.’ And I think for me what that really inspired me, because as an actress and also as a musician myself, I definitely want to inspire people. And FAME caused so much inspiration for people to follow their dreams artistically. But it’s that fine line of saying, “I really want to inspire you but I can’t be afraid to go into the darkness of aspects of humanity either, because that shines a light on what people struggle with. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: That’s pretty deep.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. So that really inspired me. And I really love what’s she up to in terms of the different kinds of roles she likes to play in terms of being able to go into darkness and yet also going into light. Just being free to paint fully the palette. I have a song, which will be on the record called Soldier Boys, which is about an actual event that happened in Iraq that happens to do with American soldiers. And it’s looking at just what our men and women go through when they go over to war and some of the atrocities they’re asked to perform and yet come back and fit back into society like everything’s cool. But that’s not true. My point is that I feel it’s freeing to have the self-permission to go into what’s not pretty and bring life to it. Because that’s I think how life illuminates and really teaches, inspires and awakens people. And that’s the kind of art I like to be apart of.

MMA Crossfire: And now you’ll need to give me a couple of minutes to digest that.

Erica Gimpel: (Laughs) OK.

MMA Crossfire: That brings me into another question. Three fundamental truths of being in show business.

Erica Gimpel: Three fundamental truths. Hard to say, that’s a great question.

It ebbs and flows, meaning that you can be in a flow of work, and then you can have moments where you feel it’s drying up. You need persistence to be apart of this work. Such rock-solid persistence. And I think the third for me is, you have to love it in order to stay in it, or the battle scars they will fling upon you… (Laughs).

Erica Gimpel, a star from the original FAME series.Picture By David Conachy

And I also think it’s really important that you keep growing, challenging yourself to go further because you can get stuck in one way of being, which can become very limiting.

MMA Crossfire: I see. So then what did you do to challenge yourself to come up with this new album? Because you did Spread Your Wings and Fly. What process did you undertake? Was it organic or did you craft something to come up with this album?

Erica Gimpel: I think I took risks in terms of life experiences. Went places that I was hesitant to go which then spurred new music like the instrumental piece Freedom. So by leaping more into my life, it brought out new music in me. I pushed the envelope in choosing to take on more experiences that I might not have in the past.

MMA Crossfire: Can you give me an example?

Erica Gimpel: I mean like traveling, like going and working in another country for example, that at first I was really hesitant to do. But by taking that leap into the unknown – because I didn’t know what I was going to step into going there – it opened up something in me that would not have opened up had I not stepped into that experience. So that’s what I mean by expanding and saying Yes to things that maybe in the past I might have been afraid to say yes to.

MMA Crossfire: I’m guessing that country wasn’t Canada.

Erica Gimpel: No, that country was Ireland.

MMA Crossfire: That certainly expanded your horizons.

Erica Gimpel: That brought some really cool music out and exposed me to cool musicians that really helped me grow as an artist.

Erica Gimpel in Malibu, California. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

MMA Crossfire: You obviously have a loyal fan base. Do you find that the people that buy your music tend to be either FAME fans or fans of your previous work?

Erica Gimpel: Yes. And sometimes what’s been cool about playing out here in the States is that people who really knew I was an actor didn’t know I played and composed so that’s been kind of cool too, meeting new people who didn’t know me until seeing me play somewhere. So that’s been kind of cool too, but definitely it’s come from some of my older work that people find.

MMA Crossfire: So you can have generations of fans discovering different sections of your work. That’s pretty cool.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, that is really cool.

MMA Crossfire: Do you think shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars help or hinder the perception of the business or getting into it?

Erica Gimpel: You know, it’s so funny; I was watching The Voicelast night. It’s really cool. The premise I really like, because everyone’s who’s a judge is also a coach and is also performing. So it’s not like they’re just sitting there watching idly and giving their critique. They’re actually getting up there and performing with their team. It’s a really interesting concept. I think what’s cool about it is you have a person who’s well-established taking a new person under their wing, coaching them, and then singing side-by-side with them at the same time. It’s a different premise.

Erica Gimpel in concert. Image courtesy Stephen Doyle.

I think the dance of our society – and I don’t know you feel about this so I’d be interested in your take – I think this whole overnight success fantasy that for whatever reason America, the world creates. A lot of these young artists have either been singing prior to coming to the show or have the good fortune to connect with this opportunity, which is going to help launch them. But it’s also like you don’t get to see what somebody is made of until after they’ve left the show, what happens to them afterward if they don’t win. Or the people who come to the show prior, they’re in their 30s and have being singing for years and years in the club. Like one guy on the show was singing background for Alicia Keys for years. Great singer. So he’s getting the opportunity to shine as a solo artist now. But everybody comes from somewhere and they come with training and a past. So there’s a part of me that says, ‘Wow! Look at how amazing they are!’ You kind of want to know about their past.

I don’t know if I’m making sense. My point is that a lot of times it’s not an overnight success thing. People have come with some training and really are busting their ass to do something, challenge themselves.

That to me is more inspiring than the overnight success story.

MMA Crossfire: Interesting. We have Canadian Idolhere, which is similar to American Idol and a few other similar shows. I thought they weren’t supportive enough of the contestants. Once the winner was crowned, it was up to them and only them to make a success of themselves. I don’t watch these shows a lot but maybe they’re starting to realize the contestants need support in all phases of the show including afterwards.

Erica Gimpel: That’s an interesting perspective. I don’t really know what they do on The Voice…

MMA Crossfire: My point is for all the winners of American and Canadian Idol, how many do you know right now?

Erica Gimpel: What’s interesting too is some of the people that don’t win. There’s certain people who did not win or got kicked off and then blew up. So the winning is not going to guarantee anything and being let go is not going to guarantee anything. It’s really the individual and what they’re going to do as they move forward. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: I think it goes back to what you said. You have to know who you are and realize that just getting on the show is an opportunity.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly.

MMA Crossfire: And once you’re on the show, it’s up to you to figure out how to use it. Once you figure that out, your chances of breaking in are increased.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly. Yup.

MMA Crossfire: And I believe on The Voice they don’t see the participants, they listen only to their voice.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly. That’s what attracted me to it because they’re actually sitting there with their backs to the person and whoever inspires them to turn around -because of their voice only – do they turn around. That’s really cool because it has nothing to with how that person looks.

MMA Crossfire: You recently went to Italy. Talk about that experience.

Erica Gimpel: In November 2011 I was asked to go to Parma, Italy to perform in a benefit concert that would be raising money for families in Italy who were having a hard time affording groceries and also for an orphanage in India. The benefit concert grew into a show that was called the ‘Box of Dreams’. I was flown to Italy where I met up with Nia Peeples,Jesse Borrego and Cynthia Gibb and we had an incredible time!

We sang some of the old fame songs like Starmaker and of course FAME and I also sang two songs from my CD, Love will Come Back to Me and Spread Your Wings. What was so surprising to me was how much the FAME songs were still loved and what warm reception we were met with. I sang one of the songs from FAME that happened to be my favorite I Still Believe in Me and was so surprised to look out into the audience during the night of the concert to see women singing along with me with tears in their eyes as if the song has become their own personal anthem. Also the band that was backing us up,Disco Inferno, had studied the songs from my CD so by the time we got to rehearsal they had all the harmonies worked out. It was wonderful collaborating with them.

The narration of the show was in Italian so I couldn’t understand a lot of it but at one point during the show an actor read a Pablo Neruda poem. Now during a rehearsal, this actor overheard me playing one of my instrumentals on the piano entitled Joyce’s Serenade, and he asked me if I would accompany his reading with my song, and we were communicating in broken English and the few words I knew in Italian but somehow we got to understand each other and of course I said Yes! And then all at once it dawned on me I was collaborating beyond languages, through music and poetry we came together. That was a special moment for me.

I think what summed up the experience was when the producer of the whole event Stefano said in his Italian/English the reason he likes to create projects like this is because he likes to share love with people. That’s what the Parma experience was, an experience from the heart. I am filled with gratitude when I can fill my life with moments like that!

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. 2012 marks the 30th anniversary of the TV show FAMEand the 25th anniversary of the last episode. Talk about FAME’s significance.

Erica Gimpel: What really floors me, and this is what I’ve gotten and it indicates how far-reaching the show really became over time. And what I mean by that specifically is how many people it inspired to follow their dreams. Especially people of color who have contacted me and sent letters or through Facebook. for example a fan from Sweden who was actually Peruvian, who hadn’t seen anybody who looked like her on a TV show. It really gave a confirmation to some people from Holland, who hadn’t seen anybody who looked like them.

Erica Gimpel in Fame. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

It gave people a confirmation that yes, you can go for what it is you truly desire. And I think it ignited an inspirational flame in a lot of people that continued to resonate and has spun off… I don’t know a lot of Canadian shows, but in terms of America, the TV show Glee, and now this new TV show called Smash, which is a behind the scenes look at a musical bound for Broadway, so it’s a musical theatre show that’s doing very well. And Glee’s success in terms of the high school Glee Club and all the musical numbers they perform. But FAME was very groundbreaking during it’s time. And what I think is unique about it is being able to harness youthful energy, that volatile, passionate, alive energy and be able to focus it in a direction, is so imperative. I feel that’s what we need in our world right now, so that our youth can really focus their energy to create something that’s really meaningful so they’re alive. That’s what it’s meant to me over the years.

MMA Crossfire: Has anyone contacted you about doing something for the anniversary?

Erica Gimpel: No, I haven’t heard anything.

MMA Crossfire: When was the last time you spoke with one of the gang?

Erica Gimpel: Well as I said, I was in Italy with some people. Probably been a year with some of them. I sometimes will see Lee (Curreri), he’s come out to some of my gigs in L.A., I saw Valerie (Landsberg) at the premiere of the new FAME movie in LA, and recently shared one of my favorite tracks from my CD entitled Love will Come Back to Mewith Lori Singer, because of her playing and love of the cello, and my song has a beautiful cello line that I wanted her to hear. Then Debbie (Allen), invited me to the opening of her dance studio in Los Angeles which was wonderful to see what she had created and the incredible talent coming out of her school.

Erica Gimpel as Coco Hernandez in Fame. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

MMA Crossfire: I can’t see the 30th anniversary going by without somebody doing something.

Erica Gimpel: Yes. We’re not halfway through the year yet, so we’ll see.

MMA Crossfire: Was it around the end of FAME, that you started dabbling with the piano?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah, well I actually started playing the piano when I was five. But I didn’t continue, like I played maybe from five to eight or nine, like really studying intensely, then I stopped and started doing other things and then came back to it around high school sort of dabbled, and then really started studying songwriting when I came back to New York.

MMA Crossfire: Compare back then and now the transition from TV to theatre.

Erica Gimpel: Well, I had really wanted to do theatre in New York, so for me it was something I was really looking forward to doing. But back then was very different than now. Now, a lot of people who have done TV draw people to the theatre, but back then it was very separate. If you had done television and were successful, it was like, ‘Well, you gotta prove to us you can do theatre,’ you know? It was a different time. So I had to pay my dues as it were (Laughs). But it was good and very different. It wasn’t the kind of Hollywood life; it was about what are you made of? When you’re on stage, there’s nowhere to hide. You’re up there. And I had some really great experiences in New York. I did a play off-Broadway called Each Day Dies with Sleepby a wonderful playwright Jose Rivera .

Erica Gimpel (L) in the Jose Rivera written play Each Day Dies with Sleep. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Did you ever hear about the film The Motorcycle Diaries? He wrote that and was nominated for the Oscar for it. He’s a very prolific playwright and screenwriter. So I was a lead there which was very transformative for my life. I continued to go back to the theatre and I ended up doing a Sam Shepard play, (State of Shock) which was a dream come true for me, working with John Malcovich. Then my favorite play, Intimate Apparel, which was written by the wonderful playwright Lynn Nottage. She’s an African-American woman and a wonderful Pulitzer prize winning writer.

My point is that the transition was challenging because it was so different and I was always learning new ropes and new ways of doing things.

Erica Gimpel: What I really learned over many years – 30 years – is what sustains you is the love of the craft itself. The love of working on a role that I’m so excited about. The love of writing songs that I get so inspired by. The love of the play that I just say, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s such an exciting play.’ Or a film script. It’s such a exercise in inner strength.

MMA Crossfire: I don’t think I could have said it any better than that. So you were dealing with all of that and then bang, all that work kind of developed that opportunity for Profiler.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah.

MMA Crossfire: And then you were back on the train again. Did Profilercome before E.R. or was it the other way around?

Erica Gimpel: It was simultaneous. I was doing two series at the same time.

MMA Crossfire: Describe that.

Erica Gimpel: It was crazy! At one point, I was going to work on Profiler and then I was going to work on E.R. and I was shooting scenes with George Clooney and then going back to working with Ally (Walker) and other people on Profiler.

Erica Gimpel Profiler still.

It was exhilarating. It was incredible, that time period. It really was. I learned a lot about hard work and dedication. It’s so much more than acting sometimes. Yes it’s the acting, but it’s like when you’re on a show, how do you keep all the crew in a good state? That what I learned from George Clooney. He was so great on the set. He would have the cameramen on the set laughing and that’s a big part of the television show. You want to make sure your crew is happy.

MMA Crossfire: Because you’re with them 20-hour days and if they’re not happy…

Erica Gimpel: It’s not fun. It’s just not fun. And it’s a big, big extended family of people working really long hours. I’ve really learned that over the years. Again, it goes back to: How are your leadership skills? You kind of need the energy on the set. You do. You need it. And I was really impressed with Maggie (Maggie Q)on Nikita because she really takes care of her crew in a really beautiful way.

MMA Crossfire: Fascinating. Because E.R. at the time was the number-one rated show and there you were, doing your thing. Was it a little bit different this time, because you were a little bit older and wiser maybe?

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. You know, I had had a real aversion for Hollywood; I didn’t really want to come back out here honestly. I would have stayed in New York, but I was in a relationship at that time. And it was great in realizing because I got to face something. Not run away, but when something has a past for you and then you go back as an adult and you face it, you kind of shine a light on what was kind of like a ghoul or something. And I was able to do that, and therefore I freed myself. It was great. That was real important. So in that way, it was different.

MMA Crossfire: And can you break down a typical shooting day at that time?

Erica Gimpel: Well I would have to make sure the shooting days were not going to overlap, so my days on Profiler would not conflict with the days on E.R.I had to double-check to make sure that was going to be OK. If my call-time was 6 a.m., I’m up at like 4 a.m. heading over there and then working. If I had lot of scenes, I’d be there all day. The day after the next , I’d be going to Profiler and switching heads. What was so good was that it was a consistent character, so it wasn’t like I was having to play a different character all the time, but it enabled me to really develop these two characters that I really fell in love with. Do you follow what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I think I get it. I was just thinking that E.R.probably made you more aware of the issues of the medical community.

Erica Gimpel in a scene with George Clooney on E.R. Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

Erica Gimpel: Well what was cool was that my role on E.R. was a social worker. I wasn’t a doctor; I was a social worker at the hospital and I had friend at the time who was a social worker and I went out with her into the real world and shadowed her. It was really informative for me, so much so that it ended up inspiring me to write a pilot TV script about social work and homelessness in America. These two women who become friends, but one is a social worker within the system and the other had been a social worker but now is running hew own grassroots organization, helping homeless families. The pilot script is entitled Hard Choices. So it not only helped me for the actual E.R. show, but it really gave me insight into some of the realities within the system in the United States.

MMA Crossfire: What is your personal and professional viewpoint on social media?

Erica Gimpel: Well, I think the positive thing of it is it’s bringing our world so much closer. It’s empowering young people to take their own creativity in their own hands, which is amazing. You can get a little camera and create your own video, music or web series. It’s very empowering, not having to go the old route, per se. I definitely grew up with going to record stores, and there’s something beautiful about having the hard copy, the CD in your hands. I’m definitely in a different generation, but I think iTunes is amazing, to have that library at your fingertips to download that song you really want in a second. It makes everything so instantaneous, at your fingertips. So that’s how I feel about that.

Erica Gimpel (R) and Shemar Moore (second left) on the set of the TV show Criminal Minds with the guest stars of the episode “The Company.” Image courtesy Erica Gimpel.

In terms of social media, for me, honestly, I mean I have my own Facebook thing but, but some of it … when people are like, ‘I’m going to the store. I’m doing this,’ it’s a little much for me. There’s a voyeuristic thing that’s occurred. You can follow everybody and hear what they’re doing every second but how present are we being in what we’re actually doing or are we just announcing what we’re doing to everybody while we’re doing it? Are you really in the moment where you are? Are you in the moment, letting everybody know where you are? It’s an odd thing.

MMA Crossfire: If you weren’t an actress or musician, what do you think you’d be doing today?

Erica Gimpel: I think I would be traveling to a lot of different places in the world. Like in New Zealand, I’d be seeing a lot of indigenous cultures all over the world. Understanding, looking at how they lived over time, that’s probably what I’d be doing.

MMA Crossfire: You strike me as someone who keeps up with current events…

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: So I was curious about your thoughts on the Trayvon Martin case.

Erica Gimpel: Very, very disturbing. Very disturbing law, that Stand Your Ground law. I just find that law very disturbing and how it’s now been extended past somebody’s home and into a community and how you can user and bend the law in ways I don’t feel is proper. I think it really speaks to a bigger issue in America and I wish I could speak more to Canada as well but I do feel like we have to heal the racism in this country. We have to heal it. Because I really feel that is what tears the fabric of America apart. I really, really do. It really is disheartening to me. Disheartening. But I’m so glad that Zimmerman has been charged. I’m very grateful for that. Very grateful.

MMA Crossfire: I hear you. Obviously it’s a tough situation and yet with President Obama in office, there seems to be a groundswell on both sides of the case. I was reading that your father is Slavic, is that correct?

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: And your mother is African-American.

Erica Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: So you’ve seen this pretty much from the beginning.

Ercia Gimpel: Yes.

MMA Crossfire: You said it’s disheartening, but is there a chance we’ll be able to learn somehow from this and move the country forward in some way?

Erica Gimpel: That’s my prayer. People have taken to the streets here and its been very volatile. And I think it’s there hasn’t been much justice done for this shooting until now. I think for me personally when you mention my racial background… because I don’t always think of the world from this perspective – I’m just moonwalking around living my life – but the gift I feel like it’s given me in my life is fully recognizing each person’s cultural gifts. And I just feel as a world if we can get to a place of celebrating our differences rather than having our racial, religious, ethnic cultural rituals separate us , rather that we can celebrate the uniqueness each on of us offers, then we can have some semblance of understanding and of trying to have dialogue so that we can come together as a world. Know what I’m saying?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, dialogue is very important.

Erica Gimpel: Yeah. And not only, “We’re different here,” but where is the bridge that we come together at, our humanity. Where do we join? We see our differences, but where do we see our sameness? And also where do we celebrate our differences, thanks goodness you view life differently than I do. You know?

MMA Crossfire: Yes, I get it. I think economics can bring things down quickly sometimes. The economy is not great and sometimes some vocal section tends to blame these problems on others. It seems to be a pattern not only in the United States but many countries.

Erica Gimpel: You know, there’s a great radio station here in Los Angeles called the Pacifica radio station, and it’s a pacifist radio station. And what’s so amazing about it is that they have archival audio of so many great thinkers. Interviews between Dr. King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, just all these great thinkers. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn. Wonderful journalists like Amy Goodman. People who have been peace builders in this world. And one man I heard said something that really stayed with me and this goes to what you’re speaking to. ‘When peace becomes as profitable as war, the world will starting honouring peace.’ It’s the financial question, which is what you’re saying. If creating peace really became more profitable than war there would be a different perspective.

MMA Crossfire: That’s a really keen observation.

Erica Gimpel: Isn’t it?

MMA Crossfire: It is, because war is profitable in so many ways.

Erica Gimpel: And keeping people divided is profitable in so many ways.

MMA Crossfire: Yes. A keen observation. That sort of brings me back because I believe you had a role on Babylon 5.

Erica Gimpel: Yes. (Laughs)

MMA Crossfire: I’m curious. Are you a Trekkie or into science fiction?

Erica Gimpel: Not really (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: So how did you end up on Babylon 5 then?

Erica Gimpel: I know! It was such a great role. It was this singer who was dying of this rare disease and Richard… Did you ever follow Babylon 5?

MMA Crossfire: I was more of a Star Trek fan.

Erica Gimpel: But the actor who was into was so amazing. we got to do such great work. And I also wrote the music to one of the songs I sang on the show. I was like, ‘I’m gonna do it!’

MMA Crossfire: And you did it.

Erica Gimpel: And that’s how I ended up doing that show.

MMA Crossfire: I see. It was an opportunity to develop a few things with a great role.

Erica Gimpel: Exactly.

MMA Crossfire: So how do you balance the ups and downs of the performing life?

Erica Gimpel: Hmm, long question (laughs). I feel like again for me it goes back to spirituality and I said earlier as we began my spiritual Buddhist practice has helped me for many many years in terms of having that strong solid internal base. And also because it helps me to determine what I really want now, because we’re always evolving, growing. And making sure I’m expanding and continually growing. I mean there’ still projects I want to create and films I want to do. I just feel like I’m still evolving, there’s still stages for me to grow. So in terms of balancing it, I just have to be nurturing myself in order to be growing. But you know, it’s not an easy ride. Especially when you’re in like you’re saying that people aren’t seeing the seeds you’re planting yet. And it looks like, ‘Well, she’s gone underground,’ but you know you’ve gone underground because you’re planting, you’re not ready to show it yet. As I mature and become more at peace with the ebbs and flows of it. I don’t know if you become fully at peace with it.

MMA Crossfire: But you are a fighter at heart.

Erica Gimpel: I am, that’s true. I will say that. Someone once said to me , ‘You are very persistent.’ I was like, ‘That is true.’ (Laughs).

MMA Crossfire: You will go over the door, under the door…

Erica Gimpel: Make a new door…

MMA Crossfire: So I have to ask you because you’re right there in California. What do you think of MMA? Have you seen it, what are your thoughts on it?

Erica Gimpel: I’ve only seen portions of it on TV. I never seen an actual live show. I’m blown away at the shape people are in. Unbelievable to me. That’s incredible. I think the training is incredible. That’s what I would say. Anything that keeps people developing and focused and strong, I mean that’s valuable. I don’t I’ve seen enough of it to really speak to it, you know what I mean? But that’s what I see in terms of a quick opinion.

MMA Crossfire: That’s fascinating. You seem pretty open-minded about it. There’s a lot of debate with MMA with some thinking it’s too violent and that sort of thing, so it’s interesting to hear your assessment.

Erica Gimpel: It’s interesting because they use a lot of mixed martial arts on Nikita. The fight co-ordinators are using it. A lot of the choreographed moves use it, so.

MMA Crossfire: Do you have any friends who are fans?

Erica Gimpel: I probably do, but none that comes to mind at this moment. Why?

MMA Crossfire: I was just curious, because it is the fastest growing sport in the world they say.

Erica Gimpel: Hmm.

MMA Crossfire: And the main company, the UFC has come from nowhere in the last 10 years or so to champion and grow the sport.

Erica Gimpel: Wow.

MMA Crossfire: I noticed there are a lot of similarities between the fighters and actors. They’ve had to train and fight – literally – to find success and overcome a lot of challenges along the way and figure out how to get to where they need to be.

Erica Gimpel: In terms of what they had to go through to get where they are at this point.

MMA Crossfire: Right.

MMA Crossfire: Erica, we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Is there anything you want to say to the readers before we go?

Erica Gimpel: I’m saying this to you. I really appreciate you reaching out and wanting to do this. I was surprised. I was like, ” How is MMA reaching out?” (Laughs). I just wanted to say Thank You, to you.

MMA Crossfire: I guess we were both surprised, because I didn’t expect you would say yes, so I’d like to say Thank You. And so you’re going to consider Toronto as a concert stop on a future tour.

Erica Gimpel: Absolutely. Absolutely.

MMA Crossfire: So I can say I convinced you to consider Toronto.

Erica Gimpel: You were the one! I will say it from the stage when I’m there!

]]>http://o.canada.com/sports/mma-crossfire-friday-file-fame-costs-a-chat-with-erica-gimpel/feed7erica-gimpel-10mmacrossfireMMA Crossfire _MG_5458Erica GimpelEsperanza SpaldingErica GimpelErica Gimpel in Malibu, California.Erica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelErica GimpelCoco_1061619bimagesphoto-3TV Wednesday: American Idol — a female poised to winhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-a-female-poised-to-win
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-a-female-poised-to-win#respondWed, 10 Apr 2013 06:04:13 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=227316When American Idol opened its 12th season, a number of things were clear from the start. And not just new judges Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban and Mariah Carey.

Though no one would say so, there was a palpable desire on the part of Idol’s brain trust that a young woman win this time. Complaints that Idol had fallen into a rut of voting through the same singer — the scruffy, male, nondescript guitar player — year after year, finally hit their mark.

Also left unspoken was a desire to get Idol back to the ratings levels of 10 years ago, when it was the most-watched program on broadcast television with an average weekly U.S. and Canadian audience of more than 20 million viewers.

American Idol finalists

With just weeks to go and six singers remaining, it’s now clear that a woman will win this year, after all. Online oddsmaker Bovada Sportsbook — yes oddsmakers actually take bets on Idol — list the sole remaining male singer, Lazaro Arbos, at the back of the pack, at 15-1. The top five spots are all women, led by season-long front-runner Angie Miller, at 3-2. If the oddsmakers’ predictions are on target, the final four will be Miller, Kree Harrison, Candice Glover and Amber Holcomb.

The bookmakers are also taking action on Dancing With the Stars, where former Idol contestant Kellie Pickler is running second, at 2-1, behind pack leader Zendaya Coleman.

Clearly, this is a good year for the American Idol women.

American Idol

The numbers, however, tell a different story. Despite the injection of fresh blood with Minaj, Urban and Carey — Minaj in particular has had an immediate effect — Idol is pulling in just 12 million viewers in the U.S., well off the pace of the Simon Cowell years. Idol performs better in Canada relatively speaking, averaging 1.7 million viewers a week, enough to place Idol 12th on the list of 30 most-watched programs, behind The Amazing Race, Survivor and Hockey Night in Canada.

While it now looks certain that a woman will win Idol for the first time since Jordin Sparks in 2007, the show itself remains in its old rut of weekly theme nights. Last week, it was rock; this week it’s the songbook of Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Bacharach and David wrote classic songs in their day, but in the age of Kanye West and Lady Gaga, they’re unlikely to click with the younger audience Idol so desperately craves — and that The Voice seems to reach at will.

Arbos, the sole remaining male singer, will once again find himself in the spotlight, and not in a good way. He has a habit of wandering off key and has struggled with remembering song lyrics, neither of which would have endeared him to Cowell, in Idol’s heyday. In one of those only-on-Idol twists, the muckraking website Vote for the Worst is exhorting followers to vote for Arbos early and often, to keep him on the show as long as possible. In a season where the front-runner has been the front-runner since day one, Arbos’s weekly escape act is becoming the sole source of suspense, and one of the few reasons to watch.

Lazaro Arbos

It’s certainly not the voices. And hasn’t been for some time. The Voice — the most enthralling, addictive talent contest to take TV by storm since, well, American Idol itself in June 2002 — is purely about voices, especially during the blind auditions phase. There’s a growing sense that, even though The Voice has yet to produce a post-show singing sensation even remotely along the lines of Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood, it is the more serious of the two shows right now, from a purely musical perspective.

American Idol

Idol still has one factor working in its favour, though — more so than The Voice. It’s the reason why so many viewers will tune into Wednesday’s performance program, even if they are fewer than they used to be. It’s the promise that a complete unknown will step into spotlight at the end, someone who, just a few short weeks ago, was just another name among the tens of thousands who tried out for Idol’s auditions. Miller may be the front-runner, and she will likely win. The point is that, eight short weeks ago, Miller was completely unknown. (CTV, Fox, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

Three to See

• Survivor, the true granddaddy of reality shows, has reached the post-merge phase of Caramoan: Fans vs. Favorites, so it’s no longer strictly fans versus favourites but rather every man, and woman, for himself or herself. In Wednesday’s hour, the remaining castaways are undecided over whether to blindside a major threat or single out an easy target. What will they do? Again, if you don’t want to know the result, don’t go trolling online for spoilers. So far, the spoilers have been spot-on. (Global, CBS, 8 ET/PT, 9 MT)

• Javier returns to Modern Family, in the form of Benjamin Bratt, with his new girlfriend in tow, played by Paget Brewster. To say this doesn’t play well with Gloria (Sofia Vergara) is understating affairs. Rob Riggle also guest-stars, as ne’er do well Gil Thorpe, Phil Dunphy’s work colleague and co-conspirator in tractor porn. (City, ABC, 9 ET/PT, 10 MT)

• Ottawa native, Carleton University grad and new-wave journalist Shane Smith, co-founder of the international media company, online site and now weekly HBO newsmagazine Vice, sits down with Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report and tries mightily to keep a straight face while Colbert berates him about his trips to North Korea, Iran and Liberia, among other funky, fun places. (CTV, 12:35 ET/PT; Comedy, 11:35 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-wednesday-american-idol-a-female-poised-to-win/feed0American IdolalxstrachanAmerican Idol finalistsAmerican IdolAmeican IdolAmerican IdolTV Tuesday: Carol Burnett honoured on American Mastershttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-carol-burnett-honoured-on-american-masters
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-carol-burnett-honoured-on-american-masters#respondTue, 09 Apr 2013 06:10:57 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=225952For anyone over 40, The Carol Burnett Show is apt to stir memories of a kinder, gentler TV age, when there were just a handful of choices and the mainstream broadcast networks didn’t feel the need to work blue in TV sitcoms, let alone consider a reality show in which semi-celebrities dive headfirst into an Olympic diving pool.

Burnett, as the title suggests in filmmaker Kyra Thompson’s absorbing American Masters biography Carol Burnett: A Woman of Character, was both a talented character actor and a woman of substance.

There’s so much more to A Woman of Character than one person’s biography, though. It’s a snapshot view of a moment in time, a glimpse of TV as it was when Saturdays were the most-viewed night of the TV week and no fewer than five eventual TV classics aired back-to-back. There was All in the Family, followed by The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show and finally Carol Burnett. In the early 1970s, another classic comedy joined the mix — a modest little number called M*A*S*H.

As A Woman of Character reminds us, though, early and often, it was also a time of monumental social upheaval. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing; protests against the Vietnam War were gaining strength; and the sexual revolution, coupled with a more vocal feminist movement, meant that a woman could host her own late-night variety show and no one would think twice about it.

Carol Burnett

Fast-forward to today and the media storm over Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon and David Letterman, not to mention Jimmy Kimmel, a former co-host of The Man Show, you could be forgiven for wondering if late-night TV has fallen back a step rather than forward. Where are the women hosts?

Filmmaker Thompson took care to interview many of Burnett’s contemporaries for A Woman of Character, including Carol Burnett regulars Harvey Korman and Tim Conway, as well as the new wave of — at the time — sharper, edgier comedians who followed, including Garry Shandling and Tracey Ullman.

Competition was fierce, even in the early 1970s, though nothing like it is today, Burnett told reporters in Los Angeles, around the time of A Woman of Character’s premiere.

“We started on Monday nights at 10 o’clock, opposite I Spy and Big Valley,” Burnett recalled. “They moved us to Wednesday, earlier in the evening, opposite Adam 12, and we just tanked. And then they got the idea to do the Saturday night lineup, and that’s when the magic happened. When you think of All in the Family and M*A*S*H and Mary and Bob Newhart and then us — it just clicked.”

Those were the days, but they’re not about to come by again any time soon.

“I feel sorry for anybody starting out today who might want to do what we did, because I don’t think it can be done anymore,” Burnett said. “I don’t think a network would have faith in it, nor would they want to put money into it. It would cost a lot more to do now what we did then.

“Now it’s pretty much all reality shows, and they can only go so far. I miss variety. I miss singing, dancing, sketches, costumes, guests stars. Maybe somebody can come back some day and a network might have faith in someone who could do that. I can think of a few people who would be wonderful. Bette Midler, Marty Short. Two that come to mind immediately. They’re funny. They can do sketches. They move well. They sing. I’d sure love to guest on one of their shows if that ever happened.

“But it’s really the suits. They run it.” (PBS, 8 ET/PT)

Carol Burnett

Three to See

• And you thought Carol Burnett was joshin.’ Splash, an actual reality show featuring celebrities diving into a concrete pool — filled with water first, presumably — returns with a “flip challenge” in which the remaining contestants must perform a complete flip while diving off any one of the show’s boards or platforms. According to the official press notes — some things just can’t be paraphrased — “This week there is no time for second chances and the lowest-scoring celebrity will be automatically eliminated from the competition without the audience or a dive-off to save them.” What, no dive-off? That just ain’t fair. We’re watching TV. We demand to be entertained. (ABC, 8 ET/PT)

• Not all reality TV is trash. Just watch Tuesday’s blind auditions on The Voice, if you doubt that. The show itself has yet to find a true singing star after two seasons, but there’s no denying The Voice’s cool vibe and obvious affection for would-be singers of any stripe who step under the spotlight and let it all hang it out. Not TV’s best reality show, perhaps — that would be The Amazing Race — but The Voice is getting there. (CTV, NBC, 8 ET/PT, MT)

• Behind the Overalls looks back on the life of home-reno expert, professional contractor and consumer advocate Mike Holmes, including rare insights into the childhood and home life of the maverick, often outspoken host of Holmes on Homes and Holmes Inspection. Included: Testimonials from celebrity fans David Suzuki and Randy Bachman. (HGTV, 9 ET/PT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-tuesday-carol-burnett-honoured-on-american-masters/feed0Carol BurnettalxstrachanCarol BurnettCarol BurnettTV Monday: The Voice hits another high notehttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-hits-another-high-note
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-hits-another-high-note#respondMon, 01 Apr 2013 06:59:55 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=222212An interesting thing happened on The Voice last week, and not just that 1.2 million viewers tuned in to Monday’s premiere — the largest audience in CTV Two’s history, CTV reported later in the week.

No, what was interesting was a sign that TV’s most entertaining amateur hour may no longer be strictly for amateurs. The final singer of the night — or edited to look like the final singer, anyway — was a 28-year-old Los Angeles native of Japanese and African-American descent who, before her blind audition on The Voice, had landed a gig as one of Michael Jackson’s backup singers on his planned This is It concert series at London’s O2 Arena. She appeared in the subsequent This is It documentary film.

But wait, there’s more.

Judith Hill performed at Jackson’s memorial service at Los Angeles’ Staples Center in July 2009, and wowed those in attendance when she sang lead on Heal the World, one of the climactic moments of the ceremony. Opportunities flooded in but, as she said in her Voice pre-show interview, she felt that grabbing one would be in poor taste.

The Voice, Season 4

Hill’s mother is a pianist, from Tokyo originally. Her father was in a ’70s funk band, and the two met while he was touring. Hill was born in Los Angeles and grew up in a musical household, surrounded by keyboards and raised on soul, R&B and classical piano. After MJ’s memorial service, she lied low at her parents’ home in Pasadena, Calif., and, finally, worked up the nerve to blind-audition for The Voice.

Why, you ask, would someone with that upbringing, musical talent and professional experience try out for a grubby reality show?

The answer — and the reason why The Voice has electrified a TV audience jaded and numbed by too many quasi-reality competition shows — is that the blind auditions are just that: They’re judged blind. The coach-mentors have their backs turned when they first hear the singers perform; they only turn their chair if they hear something in the singer’s voice they think they can work with.

Hill believed that, by auditioning for The Voice, she would be judged on her voice and her voice alone.

Hill believed that, by auditioning for The Voice, she would be judged on her voice and her voice alone, and not her looks or the fact that someone might remember her from Jackson’s memorial service.

Her decision also speaks to the credibility of the program itself. In just its third season, The Voice is being taken seriously, by serious musicians, and not as some kind of TV joke.

It took just four notes of What a Girl Wants for two of the coach-mentors to turn their chairs; the rest followed soon after. In the end, Hill chose Adam Levine over Usher, Shakira and Blake Shelton as her mentor, in part because Levine was the first — by a split second, literally — to pick up on her pipes, and in part because Levine bent over backwards — again, literally — in begging her to join his team. “Does anyone else feel robbed,” Shelton tweeted at the time, “that Judith didn’t make @adamlevine light himself on fire like he said he would?”

None of this means Hill will win, of course. The Voice is currently in its most exciting, intriguing phase — the blind auditions, which continue with a two-hour program Monday. Next are the so-called battle rounds, in which the selected singers square off in competitive duets and their respective coach-mentor decides who to carry into the final round. The final round comes last, with its traditional performance-and-audience-vote format. The Voice ends like any other TV talent competition where the audience decides: in a popularity contest.

The Voice, Season 4

The best singer doesn’t always win the popularity contest, but the best singer often goes on the best post-show career. By that point, even if they don’t win the TV contest, the audience knows who they are. Hardly anyone knew the name Judith Hill before The Voice last week — not even Usher, who met Hill backstage at the Jackson memorial and completely forgotten about it.

The Voice has hit some high notes already this season, and it’s only the second week. There’s a reason so many people are watching, and a reason why, in the U.S., The Voice is once again poised to revive the fortunes of parent network NBC, which had been lagging behind the Spanish-language channel Univision in the ratings this season. The Voice is serious business. And so, it seems, is Judith Hill. (CTV Two, NBC, 8 ET/PT, MT)

Three to See

• An entrepreneur pitching a unique kind of pepper spray tries to find a potential partner on Dragons’ Den. Viewers wondering if there’ll be a product demonstration shouldn’t read too much into the fact that Kevin O’Leary is the night’s interview guest on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, which airs half an hour before Dragons’ Den. No connection is implied, nor should any inferred. Got that? Good. Now on with the show. (CBC, 8 ET/PT)

• Kind Hearted Woman is just that, a two-night profile of Robin Charboneau, an aboriginal American single mother struggling with alcohol addiction who challenged her ex-husband in court for custody of their four children. Don’t be dissuaded: It’s not a downer. Quite the opposite, in fact. (PBS, 9 ET/PT)

• Revolution travels down lonesome road in the second episode following its midseason break, as Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) tries to hold her family together in the wake of last week’s tragic events. No one said the post-apocalyptic life would be easy. (City, NBC, 10 ET/PT, 8 MT)

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/television/tv-monday-the-voice-hits-another-high-note/feed0The Voice, Season 4alxstrachanThe Voice, Season 4The Voice, Season 4